By Susan Elise Campbell
The strategic focus of Jill Johnson VanKuren since she took over the helm of Saratoga Hospital as president and CEO in September 2022 has been on establishing a Center for Successful Aging that meets the needs of the community’s growing population of seniors. At some time during the third quarter of 2024 the Hospital will be switching over to a new electronic medical records system that VanKuren said “will provide the backbone” for a comprehensive center that brings together services supporting seniors along a continuum of care throughout the aging process.
“Albany Med is about to start their implementation of a new medical records system in the first quarter,” VanKuren said. Then affiliates under the Albany Med Health System will follow.
Saratoga Hospital is slated to integrate its records around October, she said, and “that is the Hospital’s main focus for this year.”
“This implementation has actually been several years in the making for us,” according to VanKuren. “It is more difficult than one might think to transition to a new EMR on face value, much less to do it as a large system with many different perspectives melding into one.”
But for VanKuren, the change means more than just coming under an improved EMR that reaches across the entire Albany Med network, she said.
“It’s the basis of my strategy as a new leader in developing the Center for Successful Aging,” said VanKuren. “This is a collaborative, interdisciplinary model of care as people age that starts with integrated medical recordkeeping among those disciplines.”