Article Summary
EHR information exchange will help restrain the growth in health-care spending while improving the quality of care. Electronic health information exchange has been proven to increase the speed and accuracy of diagnoses; reduce readmissions and redundant tests; and increase patient satisfaction by reducing time spent in the health-care system and reducing frustrating duplication.
By David F. Simon
It’s 3 a.m. and you’re in an automobile accident. You arrive at the local trauma center — alone, unconscious and in critical condition. During the “golden hour” after the accident, the trauma staff wants to assure that the drug it is about to give you doesn’t interact dangerously with prescription drugs you are taking.
So the nurse types your information into the trauma center’s electronic medical record system, and the search returns zero results because your prescriptions were written and filled in another city, county or state. Without a complete picture of your health and medication history, will the drugs given to you in the trauma center help you — or cause irreversible harm?
The above scenario plays out in trauma centers, emergency rooms and doctors’ offices every day. To assure better, safer care for all, disparate players in the health-care system must be able to quickly and securely find, understand and act on your medical information.
This is done through electronic health information exchange. In Pennsylvania, such connections soon will be enabled by the Pennsylvania Patient and Provider Network, or P3N. Local health-care providers will connect to a regional health information organization (HIO), which will in turn connect to the P3N hub, across which information will flow to other HIOs and their participating health-care providers. A service of the Pennsylvania eHealth Partnership Authority, the P3N is under development and pilot programs will launch later this year in the Lehigh Valley and in Southwestern Pennsylvania.
Electronic health information exchange will help restrain the growth in health-care spending while improving the quality of care. Electronic health information exchange has been proven to increase the speed and accuracy of diagnoses; reduce readmissions and redundant tests; and increase patient satisfaction by reducing time spent in the health-care system and reducing frustrating duplication.
Pennsylvania is showing promising results. In the Pittsburgh area, the ClinicalConnect HIO allowed an organ transplant patient’s physician and transplant coordinator to share information that prevented readmission. In central Pennsylvania, KeyHIE HIO has achieved reductions in unnecessary readmissions within 30 days for patients with heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
The goal is to have P3N help produce thousands of similar stories. This is being done with sensitivity to privacy and security. The P3N, its connected HIOs, and the physicians and hospitals that connect to the HIOs are part of a secure network whose authorized participants must follow all federal and state privacy laws. Any patient who does not want his information shared across the network may opt out.
For electronic health information exchange to work for everyone, it is crucial that the P3N be as robust a network as possible, with maximum participation from doctors, hospitals, pharmacies and others in the health-care system. The next time you visit your family physician, ask whether your electronic medical records are connected to a regional exchange or to the statewide network. If the answer is “yes,” thank your doctor. If the answer is “no,” encourage your doctor to visit paehealth.org for more information about the benefits of connecting. It could save your life.
David F. Simon is chairman of the Pennsylvania eHealth Partnership Authority (paehealth.org).
