Adam Flynn is working to create a social network for health care providers.
Flynn, a physician by trade, is leading an effort to push Electronic Medical Solutions LLC — a company he and two other partners own — forward to help health care providers share patient information securely and in real time.
He says the Priorus system was born from input from doctors, nurses and other health care providers who wanted a way to gain access to information that other providers were storing using electronic medical records software.
Flynn says more health care practices are storing patient information electronically, but there’s no system in place for alerting health care providers when information has been stored.
“Storing many documents isn’t good if you can’t act on it,” Flynn says.
His system, he says, aims to change that.
Basically, the Priorus system works like other social media sites, such as Facebook, allowing information to be posted and shared quickly.
The main difference is that information is more secure, and Electronic Medical Solutions does an independent verification of each user before he or she is granted access.
The system gives doctors, nurses and mid-level providers secure access to patient information when it becomes available.
So, for example, if a patient had a chest X-ray completed by a specialist and it showed some abnormalities, that image, as well as some corresponding notes, can be posted and immediately shared with that person’s primary care provider. The same could happen if an X-ray or scan came up clean.
The system, not unlike Facebook, also includes ways to track whether messages have been received.
Flynn also serves as the medical practice leader for Kansas Inpatient Services, which serves as a go-between for a patient that is transitioning from a hospital stay back to their primary care physician.
He says Electronic Medical Solutions was originally developed in 2007 as a way to push out to other providers all of the information Kansas Inpatient Services was collecting on patients. But Flynn says he saw gaps in how health care providers were receiving patient information, if they were receiving it at all.
The system that is in place now relies heavily on phone calls and faxes for information sharing.
So Flynn’s development team started looking for ways to duplicate what Kansas Inpatient had been doing on a larger level.
Now, Flynn is working to get a local physician network signed up and trained on the system.
Electronic Medical Solutions has a contract with the Specialty Independent Practice Association of Kansas, a local physician network, and expects to have all of its 230 members as part of the system in the next two months. Now, about 100 are using the Priorus system.
Flynn says long term the goal is to work with electronic medical records vendors and health information exchanges, a collection point for electronic medical health records, places where much data is stored and needs to be pushed out.
Flynn says the idea is not to replace existing electronic medical records software, but rather to complement those programs by providing ways for providers to notify other providers of the presence of patient data.
“Our system offers a technology that vendors selling HIEs (health information exchanges) can’t offer,” Flynn says.
He says Electronic Medical Solutions charges a network fee that is $40 a month per physician in the network. That allows information to be sent and received. Physicians can receive information and messages from the system for free, but only paying members can send anything out via the network.
“It enhances the value position (for health care providers) when you know all of your surrounding referral base can get on and communicate,” Flynn says.
Flynn has been working with Marlon Dauner, the former CEO of Preferred Health Systems and now a health care consultant, to help with the widespread launch of the Priorus system.
Right now, the system will be focused on Wichita-area health care providers, though Flynn eventually hopes to take it statewide and possibly regionally.
Electronic Medical Solutions has six employees and is operating out of a small office at 9415 E. Harry.
Kimberly Sanders, a nurse by trade, is one of those employees. As the company’s director of clinical support, she is charged with recruiting physicians to the network and training them on how to use it.
The Priorus system can be accessed by computer as well as on iPhone and Android devices. The application is free to download on those systems, but providers don’t gain access to the system until they’ve gone through the vetting process.
