Seattle-based Group Health Cooperative is investing $40 million to $45 million in new technologyincluding in the Spokane-area marketthat will standardize its computer systems and allow electronic medical record keeping at all of its 25 clinics in Washington and North Idaho.


The system is being implemented in clinics in Western Washington now, and the entire system should be operational by 2005, says Tom Susens, administrator of Group Healths Eastern Washington/North Idaho region.


The new systems will complement Group Healths consumer-aimed technology, which now allows members to make doctors appointments, view lab results, and order prescriptions online, Susens and Cheryl Scott, Group Healths CEO, said in a telephone interview this week. The nonprofit health-care provider earlier spent about $7 million on that Web-based technology, which is called MyGroupHealth, Scott says.


Group Healths emphasis on technology came about as part of a soul-searching exercise the organization undertook a year and a half ago, Scott says. As both a provider of health care and a health insurer, Group Health is unique in the state, she claims. Group Health decided that improving its service through technologyto both its members and its health-care providerscould help it capitalize on that uniqueness, she says.


Because our economics arent tied to a visit or a procedure or a hospital stay, we can offer medical services without having to worry about reimbursement, Scott says. We reimburse ourselves. That allows for medical technology and innovation that no one else is doing.


After sustaining losses in the late 1990s, Group Health is healthy financially again, with revenues last year of $1.7 billion, Scott says.


Scott and Susens note that investments in the $40 million range wouldnt have been possible if the Eastern Washington and North Idaho market still were operated as a separate entity, as was the case until the beginning of 2000. That year, the Spokane-based organization, Group Health Northwest, was absorbed into Group Health Cooperative.


Without statewide resources we wouldnt be able to make these kinds of investments we are now at the pace we are now, Susens says.


Scott says Group Health wouldnt even exist on this side of the state if the Seattle-based parent organization hadnt stepped in.


Group Health Northwest got into a real financial pickle, as many health-care organizations did in 1996 and 1997. Group Health Cooperative came in with its reserves and helped us stay in Spokane. We would not have stayed in Spokane had it not been for the reserves, she says.


Despite being based in Seattle, Scott says she sees Group Health as a statewide organization that has two locations where we make the decisions of this organizationone is Seattle and the other is Spokane.


Group Health employs about 700 to 750 people here, about half of whom are medical professionals who work in its five clinics in Spokane and Coeur dAlene, and about half of whom hold administrative positions, such as marketing and claims processing, in its regional office here at 5615 W. Sunset Highway, she says.


The organization has about 600,000 members, and of those, about 83,000 are in Eastern Washington and North Idaho, Group Health says. Enrollment numbers have been growing steadily, Susens and Scott say.