By Tara DeRock Mahoney
Senior Staff Writer

    Morgan Memorial administrators announced this week that the hospital has been selected as the sole state recipient of a half-million dollar grant to set up an electronic medical records system in the hospital and with associated physicians and pharmacists.
     “It’s $544,000 for health information technologies,” said Megan Morris, director of Development and Public Relations for the hospital. “This will facilitate [the sharing of information] with different medical providers — at first just locally, but the long-term goal is to link with larger providers such as Athens Regional.”
    The grant will help with hardware and software to get electronic medical records into the offices of local doctors.
    “One of the main criteria for the grant was to improve outcomes related to cardiovascular disease and diabetes,” said Patrick Cook, vice president of Support and Services.       “In our [grant] proposal, we showed how we will measure six different indicators for these diseases.”
    The grant, formally known as the Critical Access Hospital Health Information Technology Network Grant, is issued by the Department of Community Health on behalf of the state Office of Rural Health.
    “This was a team effort,” said Morgan Hospital Authority Chairman Terry Evans. He praised the successful efforts of grant committee members H.D. Cannington, Darlena Kinnett, Patrick Cook, Megan Morris, Ronnie Boggs, Craig Strain, Sherry Vaughn  and Stormy Middleton, as well as area doctors.
    “I’m really proud that every physician on staff at this hospital submitted data that helped us get this grant,” said Evans.
Hospital administrators organized a celebratory lunch on the hospital grounds Monday afternoon for the announcement of the grant; they hope to hold a formal ceremony with area legislators within a couple of weeks.
“We have so many good things going on,” said H.D. Cannington, Morgan Memorial CEO.