EHR Progress Reports
Public Health
Medicaid data exchanged in real time
The Mississippi Division of Medicaid (DOM) has become the nation’s first Medicaid agency to send and receive clinical data in real time with a health system using the Epic medical records system. The agency worked with MedeAnalytics and Epic to provide Medicaid data to the state’s largest provider of care to Medicaid patients, the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC). The connection is powered by healthcare analytics specialist MedeAnalytics.
This accomplishment means that UMMC doctors can now review the electronic medical history of DOM patients, allowing them to make better-informed decisions quickly.
MedeAnalytics established and standardized DOM’s Medicaid Enterprise Master Patient Index (EMPI), a multi-year initiative that serves as the core identity management service to allow easy management of a patient’s longitudinal record.
MedeAnalytics first helped DOM lay the groundwork for the project by creating an EMPI and single patient identifier in 2014. They analyzed and de-duped more than a decade of medical records from 2.3 million Medicaid beneficiaries. The process resulted in a unique longitudinal patient record for more than 750,000 Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) beneficiaries.
MedeAnalytics also worked with DOM to make the data accessible through a Medicaid provider portal, then began the next phase of the project, which was standardization of the Medicaid clinical EMPI to support a clinical data interface with external stakeholders.
Today, DOM and UMMC can interact to share Consolidated-Clinical Document Architecture (C-CDA) patient summaries through UMMC’s Epic EHR. MedeAnalytics expects to receive approximately 3,500 clinical inquiries per day from UMMC and will send the corresponding clinical summaries for Medicaid beneficiaries in response.
Acute Care
UTMC speeds development of inpatient EHR
Cloud-based services provider athenahealth is expanding its relationship with the University of Toledo to develop athenahealth’s electronic health record with the University of Toledo Medical Center (UTMC) for providers who cross ambulatory and hospital care settings. The University of Toledo Physician Group has been an athenahealth client since 2014.
Development at UTMC will focus heavily on creating a seamless physician and nurse user experience for the academic medical center. Research will focus on identifying areas needing improvement for acute care workflows and then addressing them.
athenahealth announced the extension of its services into the acute care setting in early 2015 with the acquisitions of RazorInsights and webOMR. athenahealth will convert the technology acquired in these transactions into a comprehensive, cloud-based service within athenaNet for hospitals of all sizes and complexities. The new service, athenaClinicals for Hospitals & Health Systems, will be an extension of the company’s existing EHR, athenaClinicals, ranked Best in KLAS for ambulatory care.
The effort will fully implement the cloud across all inpatient and outpatient environments.
Behavioral Health
New data sets get integrated
Minnesota Community Healthcare Network (MCHN), an alliance of five behavioral health organizations, is on its way to establishing interoperability among its member companies to enable care teams and clients to share healthcare information in real time.
Through the Minnesota Accountable Health e-Health Initiative, and in partnership with Hennepin County Medical Center and Hennepin Health, MCHN created the “Mission Hennepin Community Collaborative” with the goal of using health information exchange to support communication and care coordination between MCHN members and the Hennepin Health System, an accountable care organization (ACO) consisting of four partners: Metropolitan Health Plan, Hennepin County Medical Center, the Hennepin County Human Services and Public Health Department, and North Point Health and Wellness Center.
MCHN received State Innovation Model (SIM) grant funds through the Minnesota Department of Health for this project. Beyond funding, MCHN needed to address the complexity inherent in bringing together clinical data at scale, including the ability to manage consent, security, and establishing interoperability across its members’ different IT environments.
MCHN enlisted RelayHealth, experienced in interoperability and the service provider for CommonWell Health Alliance, to help it establish connectivity throughout its complex environment. This new connectivity, powered by the RelayHealth vendor-neutral and SaaS-based solution, will acquire and normalize critical information from across care settings and provide access to aggregated information about an individual at the point of care. Establishing interoperability within the whole community using a solution that can scale across the entire health system will help MCHN build a foundation for more coordinated care.
Decision Support
Evidence-based treatment drives down sepsis rates
Sepsis is the deadliest condition treated in hospital critical care units, claiming approximately 258,000 lives in U.S. hospitals every year. At an estimated $20 billion annually, it is also the country’s most expensive condition to treat. Because the risk of death increases every hour the condition goes untreated, early identification is crucial to improving outcomes. That’s where solutions like Wolters Kluwer’s POC Advisor, a cloud-based decision support platform for the diagnosis and treatment of sepsis, can truly prove lifesaving.
POC Advisor, which can handle patient data from disparate clinical systems, leverages patient data within the EHR using real-time analytics and automated surveillance to deliver early sepsis alerts and treatment advice to clinicians via mobile devices and clinical portals. The solution reduced sepsis mortality by 53 percent in a pilot study at 941-bed Huntsville Hospital in Alabama in 2015.
In December 2015, Halifax Health, East Central Florida’s largest healthcare provider, decided to partner with Wolters Kluwer to adopt POC Advisor into its clinical workflow. Halifax, home to Florida’s largest emergency department (ED) with more than 116,000 emergency visits annually, will be the first to adopt POC Advisor for use in the ED.
Solutions
Foster provider, payer, consumer collaboration
Cognizant Health TranZform is a new digital healthcare platform developed with technology from Orion Health that aims to help consumers make more informed decisions about the cost and quality of their care, while enabling healthcare providers and payers to drive greater levels of consumer engagement and operational efficiency. This secure, cloud-based utility enables different industry healthcare stakeholders to easily interact with each other and consumers across the care continuum. Data from multiple systems, including payer data from Cognizant’s TriZetto payer core administration platforms, data from physician practice management systems, and other healthcare ecosystem platforms, can be integrated with EHRs to provide an improved customer experience and drive new solutions. Cognizant, Orion Health
PointClickCare, a cloud-based software platform used by more than 10,000 facilities for the senior care continuum, was recognized in January by KLAS Research as the definitive Best in KLAS segment winner in Long-Term Care for 2015/2016, marking the solution’s third consecutive win in the category. This suite of fully integrated applications is powered by an interoperable, mobile-friendly, and regulatory-compliant EHR and revenue cycle management platform, helping customers connect and collaborate within their care network, achieve and demonstrate higher quality outcomes, optimize financial performance, and simplify their regulatory burden. PointClickCare
Bridge the gap between EHR systems and big data
AndonCare, a first-of-its-kind cloud-based care management analytics solution created by SSERACT and Quammen Health Care Consultants, proactively guides clinicians and other staff members to navigate all aspects of care as it unfolds. With this solution, important data is not just housed in an EHR but is fully utilized to move care in the right direction, leveraging just-in-time intelligence to help meet compliance requirements, identify and use best practice standards, improve patient safety by proactively addressing potential hazards, reduce length of stay, and significantly enhance overall patient care delivery. AndonCare will be piloted in late spring 2016 by a variety of healthcare organizations and will be generally available in fall 2016. Quammen Health Care Consultants, SSERACT
Get real-time analytics at the point of care
Based on one of healthcare’s largest datasets and integrated with nearly 600 EHR platforms, Data Diagnostics offers patient-specific data analyses that can be ordered individually on demand by clinicians at the point of care, within their existing workflow prior to or during a patient consult. Each report identifies specific actions the physician may take to improve the patient’s care according to quality, risk, utilization, and other metrics, including criteria that can affect financial payment for health services under value-based reimbursement models. Data Diagnostics is part of the new Quanum brand of Quest Diagnostics healthcare information technology solutions. Quest Diagnostics
iKnowMed has been named the top-ranked EHR platform for oncologists and hematologists for the fifth year in a row by Black Book Rankings. iKnowMed was recognized for its superior focus on meeting the unique needs of community-based oncology practices. Implemented in more than 620 sites of care nationwide and used by more than 1,600 providers, iKnowMed EHR and iKnowMed Generation 2 received top rankings in 12 key performance areas, including support and customer care, best-of-breed technology and process improvement, and strategic alignment with client goals. Integrated modules include a patient portal and solutions that address patient engagement, data analytics, inventory and purchasing management, and revenue cycle reporting. McKesson Specialty Health
Clinical researchers offered ‘patient registry in a box’
InterSystems has partnered with Pulse Infoframe to facilitate clinical research and population health studies. Leveraging the InterSystems HealthShare health informatics platform for interoperability between clinical research systems and EHRs, physicians and researchers can easily capture, organize, model, store, and share clinical research data through a secure, Web-based application. Healthie, the Pulse platform, is a cloud-based clinical business intelligence solution that connects specialists from around the world in self-configuring networks and aggregates data from both mobile and stationary devices. Together, the technologies provide up-to-date tracking on how patients are doing. InterSystems, Pulse Infoframe
