PrintGreenbrier County business executive John King would have made a good candidate for Gov. Joe Manchin's "Come Home to West Virginia" campaign.
Four years ago, King, who grew up in White Sulphur Springs, and his partners moved their medical records company and its seven employees from Huntsville, Ala., to the town best known as the home of The Greenbrier resort.
They purchased an abandoned shoe factory - a junkyard for refrigeration parts at the time - invested $1.2 million to renovate the dilapidated building, then watched the business soar.
The company now employs 42 workers, hosts 9 million medical records and has contracts with 50 community hospitals, clinics and physicians' practices in 19 states, including West Virginia, Oregon, Florida, Texas and Oklahoma.
"We've been very fortunate," said King, EvriChart's chief operating officer. "We help our clients manage health records properly."
Why the phenomenal growth?
King cites the company's decision to focus exclusively on health records, and the recent push by the health-care industry to move from paper to electronic patient records.
"We're on the cutting edge of all that right now, and it's our specialty," King said. "That has really separated us from other record management companies."
Manchin has pushed for the switch to electronic medical records. President Obama also has cited electronic health records as one of the cornerstones of his health-care reform plan.
Public health leaders and others believe the switch from paper to electronic records will save money and improve patient care.
"When electronic records are adopted in any form, there are improvements in patient care," King said. "Records can be located more easily, more quickly."
The change also helps health-care providers to process reimbursement claims with public and private insurance plans.
Most smaller hospitals and clinics can't afford the computer servers and software required to switch from paper to digital records. Such computer systems can cost more than $100,000.
Instead, EvriChart does all the work for clients on its computer servers in White Sulphur Springs.
The company stores all the data and scans all the records into a digital format so that doctors and other medical personnel can quickly access patient records over the Internet from locations throughout the U.S.
"All they need is an Internet connection and a Web browser, and it's all done securely," King said. "We do all the heavy lifting."
Hospitals and physicians' groups that have started or want to make the switch to electronic medical records quickly realize it's difficult to share patient information with other health-care providers because computer record-keeping software from facility to facility is often incompatible.
"Our products solve that problem," King said. "We have built in the bridges to the gaps with the exchange of information. That has been designed from the ground up by EvriChart."
The company frequently serves as a problem solver.
A southeastern U.S. hospital recently asked EvriChart to help it find patient records needed to disprove a medical malpractice claim.
EvriChart workers traveled to the hospital, retrieved 1,100 boxes of records, hauled them to the White Sulphur Springs office, sorted, scanned and indexed them chart by chart, and ultimately found the records the hospital was looking for.
"We don't mind getting our hands dirty," King said, adding that a judge ultimately dismissed the malpractice lawsuit against the hospital.
EvriChart also stores medical records - 39,000 boxes, 5 million records - at last count. That only fills up 30 percent of the company's 60,000-square-foot building in White Sulphur Springs.
Every record is indexed for immediate retrieval.
"The paper medical records are still more common than you would think," King said. "We know where everything is. We're not even close to capacity at the warehouse."
The health-care industry has weathered the economic downturn better than most sectors, and EvriChart is no exception.
The company continues to push profits back into operations. The company also has four patents pending.
"The real key is we do only health care, and we know how to take care of our customers," said Tony Maro, chief information officer at EvriChart and one of four partners at the firm - along with King, his brother, Pat King, and Gayle Keith. "That's helped us keep our focus on our niche market and be the best we can in the business."
That also keeps people like King in West Virginia, where he wants to stay. King now lives just a half-mile down the road from his childhood home.
"I wouldn't want to be anywhere else," King said. "We feel very blessed."
Photo courtesy of EvriChart
John King and Tony Maro (right) brought their medical records company to White Sulphur Springs in 2005.
Reach Eric Eyre at ericeyre@wvgazette.com
or 304-348-4869.
