Blackstone Valley Community Health Care

CHS Grant

October 10th, 2009

Practicing physicians have difficult decisions to make all day, every day. In addition to the obvious clinical decisions made in the exam room, providers must also respond to telephone or electronic requests from patients, pharmacists and payers. Intelligent decisions require a synthesis of current information about the specific patient, their health history and disease, test results, opinions from consultants and medications (prescribed by you and elsewhere). This processing must take place entering the maze of 3rd party payers, patient interpretation of information, recommendations from relative and friends, etc.

Blackstone Valley Community Health Care made a decision, some years ago, to transform itself into a data driven, evidence based organization focused on the quality of the care we deliver. A significant early step was a commitment to Electronic Medical Records and to utilizing the wealth of information available in the record to analyze and improve patient care.

After two and one half years of being fully electronic we are now ready, thanks to a Federal grant, to broaden our interest in usable data by adding a Health Information Exchange, a NextGen Community Health Solutions (CHS). CHS is an out of the box Health Information Exchange that offers the following advantages to a practice:

*Primary care physicians, specialists and hospitals will benefit by being able to transmit and access data in an accurate, up to date fashion that will support day to day practice.

*Access is available to every interested Rhode Island physician, hospital or laboratory either through EMRs or via a web portal.

*Ability to interact with multiple EMR products (ex. Information can flow from a primary care office to specialist and vice versa. EMR from different vendors can talk to each other).

*‘Break the glass’ access for emergency situations.

*Capable of storing medication, allergy, chronic problems list, and other patient specific data.

*Ability to store or access imaging studies.

*Serve as site for ordering and receiving laboratory studies electronically.

*Automatically update data for enrolled patients into existing EMR and hospital systems.

This type of data system can serve patients by minimizing repetitive testing, easing communication between primary and specialty practices for both clinical and demographic information and by enhancing the safety and appropriateness of medication prescribing.

We, as consumers, patients and taxpayers will be able to reap the long term benefits of a safer, more efficient and more affordable health care system.