For many years, providers in the health care field have been moving toward an entirely electronic medical record for individuals. The process has been slow: the earliest efforts focused only on parts of the health care continuum, with stand-alone systems for pharmacy records or lab test results, but the problem remained that those systems were not integrated with each other or that some care records were not captured. In recent years, however, these disparate systems have begun to converge and communication among them has improved.

Last year, the Kendal family of communities identified commercially-available software, called Answers on Demand (AOD), which should allow us to build such an integrated system over the next couple of years. At a formal kickoff in April of 2008, finance, health services and information technology staff from around the Kendal system participated in a presentation to learn how the software can improve care through better clinical documentation. As a result, we agreed as a system to adopt and customize AOD as a common platform for each of our communities. Staff from The Kendal Corporation - Peggy Sinnott, Director for Health Services; Elaine Jackson, Kendal Affiliate Services Training Coordinator; Joe Savery, Director for Information Technology; and Crystal Baker, Operations Accountant - are leading the installation process at each of our locations.

By September of 2009, Kendal at Hanover, Kendal at Granville, Kendal at Oberlin, and Kendal on Hudson have all "gone live". Kendal Crosslands Communities are in the process of implementation currently and expect to switch to the new system in October. The entire conversion of the Kendal system to AOD will last well into 2010. We look forward to the increased accuracy of this type of system, and the enhanced safety to be enjoyed by residents as a result.