The Journal of mHealth Vol 3 Issue 1 (Feb/Mar 2016) | Page 26

Health Data Exchange Empowers Clinicians to Deliver Patient-centred Care

How Health Data Exchange
Empowers Clinicians to Deliver
Patient-centred Care
3 early interoperability success stories
By Martha Thorne, Senior Vice President &
General Manager, Population Health at Allscripts
As electronic health records (EHRs)
become
commonplace,
healthcare
organisations have vast amounts of
patient data in electronic form. This
information is powerful when clinicians
can easily and securely share it across
care settings. Studies show that access to
comprehensive patient information can
help clinicians make better decisions at
the point of care.1
While industry progress toward interoperability has been slow, pioneers of
health data exchange are seeing some
promising results. Three organisations
that use Allscripts interoperability platform, dbMotion Solution, are among
those dedicated to improving interoperability and patient-centred care.
Data exchange in UPMC’s paediatric
environment
As a large health system in Pennsylvania, UPMC operates more than 20
hospitals and 500 outpatient sites. The
interoperability effort in its paediatric
environment crosses two busy tertiary
care facilities, Children’s Hospital of
Pittsburgh of UPMC and Magee-Women’s Hospital of UPMC.
“It’s all about meaningful contextual information at the point of care,”
UPMC Clinical Director of Interoperability Amy Urban, DO, said. “The right
information, to the right stakeholder, in
the right format, through the right channel, at the right point in the workflow.”
Dr. Urban emphasizes that the true goal
of interoperability is to provide patientcentric care. The UPMC effort includes:
»» Intra-hospital exchange. Communication starts within the hospital. Continuity of obstetric care

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February/March 2016

is important – from prenatal care,
through labour and delivery and
post-natal care. Inpatient and outpatient systems must seamlessly review
and exchange data.
»» Intra-facility exchange and transfer. For situations such as high-risk
neonatal births, or special surgical and subspecialty evaluation of
infants, it’s important for UPMC’s
facilities to be able to share information. When babies move between
facilities, their complete medical
records must follow.
»» Inter-institutional exchange and
transfer. UPMC hospitals often
receive patients from surrounding
community hospitals and urgent
care clinics for further evaluation
and care. It’s connecting with statewide sources of information, such
as health information exchanges
(HIEs) and immunization databases,
to review pertinent medical records
to ensure high quality care.
Two outpatient paediatric facilities went
live on the interoperability solution via
the HIE in 2013 and started using the
data. For example, a paediatric rehabilitation facility has 194 active clinical users
who have viewed 9,300 patient records.
One of the largest independent paediatric physician practices in western
Pennsylvania also went live viewing data
in 2013, and it has 160 active clinical
users who have viewed more than 2