After successfully committing most major Mid-South hospitals to its community health information exchange during the past eight years, the MidSouth eHealth Alliance (MSeHA) this year has begun expanding its initiative to office-based physicians in West Tennessee.
MSeHA, a non-profit initiative that provides the electronic exchange of health information across multiple platforms in the Mid-South, plans to integrate physicians into its health information exchange (HIE), which contains medical information for more than 1.5 million patients.
Currently, 16 area hospitals share a patient’s medical information electronically through the MSeHA. The list of hospitals involved includes Baptist Memorial Health Care, Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare, St. Francis Hospital, Regional One Health and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
Already this year MSeHA has signed 16 office-based physicians to its HIE and plans to bring onboard an additional 50 practices and clinics by the end of 2016.
“We want to provide physicians with a solution where they can have immediate access to their patient’s medical information in one place without having to go to multiple sources to find out what happened to their patient outside their four walls,” said Cameron Brackett, executive director for the MSeHA. “We want to streamline the point of care, avoid any duplication of tests, which lower costs, and provide the right information the physician needs on the patient at the right time.”
National trends show that many office-based physicians have adopted an electronic health record (EHR), which is the digital form of a patient’s medical information. According to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health and Information Technology in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, eight in 10 office-based physicians had adopted an EHR by the end of 2014.
These records can be uploaded into a HIE so physicians, hospitals and ambulatory clinics can access a patient’s health information and determine where the patient has been treated as well exchange a baseline of pertinent patient information such as:
* Immunizations
* Allergies
* Lab results
* Medications
* Admissions, discharge and transfer data
* Progress reports
* Cardiology and radiology reports
* Discharge summaries
Brackett says MSeHA’s relationship with the regional hospital systems gives them a solid foundation because most patients in the Mid-South visit one of the many regional hospitals in the area for treatment. Physicians who sign up can access a variety of up-to-date medical data on their patients through MSeHA’s HIE.
In addition, Brackett says that by signing up local physicians, the exchange will create an added value across the board for all providers in the Mid-South.
“We expect the amount of information will improve drastically on patients,” Brackett said. “This will be more helpful for the provider. For instance, if a patient changes insurance companies and must see a physician affiliated with a new hospital system, the information will be in one place.”
Michael Cates, president of the Memphis Medical Society, a local professional membership organization representing Mid-South physicians in conjunction with the Tennessee Medical Association, agrees that this strategy can work for physicians.
“Physicians need more immediate access to a patient’s records, and it’s easier for them to access it in one place than to have to go through different channels,” he said. “An HIE works because there is no lapse in care and physicians access the patient information they need directly and quickly.”
Brackett says the key to getting physicians onboard is to learn how they access and share a patient’s medical information.
“Healthcare providers can get easily overwhelmed in managing their EHR,” he said. “Some don’t even have an EHR; they still store their medical records in paper files. It’s a complex issue, and each practice does things differently. Also, many practices do not have an IT staff, and the technology aspect of a HIE can seem daunting. It’s our job to reduce the number of challenges to make it easy to connect them to the HIE and gain interoperability throughout the community.”
According to Brackett, it is a two-phased process. Phase one is connecting physicians to the data already in the system.
“When a physician signs an agreement with us, he or she is connected immediately,” Brackett said. “The physician doesn’t have to download software. They can log on to our secure website portal and see their patient’s medical information from outside the practice.”
Brackett says office-based practices do not have to have an EHR to participate in phase one.
“We don’t want to alienate practices,” he said. “The physician can print off the patient’s information and place it in a paper chart in the office. This cuts down on the extra time it would take calling or faxing a hospital for a patient’s medical information.”
For the practices that have adopted EHRs, they can upload portions of clinical information into the system as part of phase two. A hospital, clinic or physician’s office integrated in the HIE will be able to access and exchange the patient’s information.
Last year, MSeHA launched a new service within its HIE called admissions, discharge and transfer (ADT) alerting. This direct messaging mechanism alerts participants when their patient is admitted to a hospital or discharged or transferred from a hospital.
“The physician can look up any lab results or discharge reports from the hospital or emergency room and schedule a follow-up visit for their patient the next day,” Brackett said.
According to Brackett, MSeHA’s expanding segments are local primary-care physicians, specialists, nursing homes and skilled nursing facilities.
Also, he says MSeHA’s HIE will work well for referral management, which will lower costs and improve efficiency over time.
“When a patient is referred to a specialist from his or her primary-care physician, the specialist can access a patient’s results right away,” Brackett said. “This will alleviate any tests from being duplicated. As the fee for value market grows, MSeHA will become even more significant in providing efficient quality of care.”
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