Samaritan Medical Center has been awarded a Statewide Health Care Facility Transformation Grant totaling nearly $22 million

Published on: December 30, 2025

WATERTOWN, NY – Samaritan Medical Center has been awarded a Statewide Health Care Facility Transformation Grant totaling nearly $22 million to support a comprehensive upgrade of its electronic medical record (EMR) system, transitioning the hospital system to a single, unified platform across all clinics and specialty services. This investment will modernize Samaritan’s infrastructure, streamline clinical workflows, and significantly enhance the patient experience by providing one secure, easy-to-navigate patient portal for online health information.

The need for a unified EMR has been evident for several years as Samaritan Medical Center has continued to grow. Operating multiple EMR systems has created inefficiencies for physicians and staff, led to complex and duplicative workflows, and required patients to navigate as many as three different online portals to access their health records. This grant represents a critical step forward in addressing these challenges and ensuring Samaritan’s technology keeps pace with the care it delivers and meets patient’s expectations.

“This funding comes at a critical point in our EMR journey,” said Tom Carman, President and CEO of Samaritan Medical Center. “We started the project management and needs assessment before the COVID-19 pandemic, and the cost to upgrade and update our back-end infrastructure and main EMR system has been daunting. Without this critical funding, this project would have been delayed several more years, since there are only so many capital funds each year to allocate.”

Please see announcement available here  https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-hochul-announces-more-300-million-advance-health-information-technology-and

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