Like many healthcare organizations, Raleigh Medical Group, an internal medicine and gastroenterology group with four main and 11 satellite locations, has been challenged with finding the most efficient way to exchange patients’ clinical records with other providers with the aim of quickly closing the loop on patient care.
As a member of the WakeMed Key Community Care accountable care organization (ACO), the medical group was an early adopter in early 2012 of a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) referral coordination solution, specifically Infina Connect’s Intelligent Care Coordinator solution, to enable electronic referrals among the ACO provider members.
“Using Infina for our referral processes, we were essentially exporting documents out of our electronic health record (EHR) and then attaching them electronically and then importing them to the website. But we couldn’t send the documents directly from our EHR,” Kelly Crisp, director of health information and technology at Raleigh Medical Group, says.
Crisp says the medical group’s electronic medical record (EMR) system was enabled for direct messaging, yet the question remained if other providers in the Raleigh area had the same technology and would be able to receive the direct messages.
“We try to stay on the forefront of technology, however, you’re only as good as the recipients of those direct messages, so we had some challenges there,” Crisp says.
Crisp and Sujatha Raman, M.D., an internal medicine physician and Raleigh Medical Group’s lead technology physician, have been proactive about adopting new health IT solutions to not only improve efficiencies in healthcare delivery but also as part of the medical group’s meaningful use attestations. In addition to wanting better care coordination for patients in collaboration with referred specialists, Crisp and Dr. Raman knew that electronic referrals that could send clinical documents directly from the EHR would help the medical group meet requirements for MU Stage 2, objective 15, measure 2. That measure requires healthcare providers to electronically transmit a continuity of care document (CCD) to at least 10 percent of their referrals by using certified electronic health record technology (CEHRT) or eHealth Exchange transmission.
