Every you time you visit your health care provider, you mostly likely are faced with the daunting task of recalling your medical history – from yesterday to birth, in some cases. You fill out paper forms. You lug medical records from office to office. Or perhaps you decide it is too much work and just don’t share your clinical history. All of which leaves much to be desired in terms of ensuring you receive the best care possible.
For years, the HIT industry has been trying to solve for this.
CommonWell has made great strides in helping your providers (and you!) access your medical records regardless of where that care occurred, who provided it or what software system they are on.
Next week at HIMSS17 in Orlando, two CommonWell members – Brightree and Cerner – will be giving live demonstrations of their EHRs with CommonWell services built directly into the current provider workflow. Attendees will be able to watch as a patient navigates the health care system starting in an in-patient setting, moving to a home care setting and ultimately following up with her primary care physician (PCP.
Meet Gloria Hill
Gloria is a 66-year-old woman who has a history of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus. She was admitted to the hospital with an infected diabetic foot ulcer and high serum glucose. During her hospitalization, wound care protocols were established, and her medications were adjusted to gain control of her blood sugars and to treat the wound infection. Gloria was discharged with home health care. The home health nurse and other team members worked with Gloria and her family to provide disease management instruction and monitoring, wound care and medication education. Gloria is scheduled to see her PCP about her diabetic disease management, the progression in the healing of her foot ulcer, and the strides she has made on her overall health.
The CommonWell Solution
As you can see, Gloria’s situation is complex, but unfortunately not unusual. During the live demonstrations, you will see how using CommonWell services allow her providers to find, access and leverage her patient records to coordinate her care.
In-Patient Stay (Cerner PowerChart)
During this portion of the live demo, visitors will see the provider at the Cerner facility enroll the patient in CommonWell services, identify the patient in the CommonWell system and create a local ID for that patient. They will then validate and retrieve her health records already available from past participating provider visit, all of which is completed directly in the Cerner EHR and established provider workflow. As her stay comes to an end, you will see her referred to a home care provider for ongoing care.
Post-Acute (Home Health) Care Setting (Brightree Home Health)
The referral will go from Cerner to Brightree using Direct Secure Messaging. Upon intake into the home health practice, Gloria will automatically be linked to the CommonWell person record using the local ID from the Cerner acute EHR system. The home health provider will be able to immediately retrieve additional data and documents by using CommonWell within their native workflow.
Unique to these services is the introduction of correlated linking to the patient record prior to when the patient is seen by the home health provider. This is extremely valuable to the post-acute provider as it improves the ability to retrieve health information and access the patient information upon initial referral. Data retrieved by the home health agency will include the physician’s notes and orders and will include the face-to-face documentation, which is necessary to justify home care.
Additionally, Brightree will be querying for and retrieving these documents leveraging FHIR transactions, which is a game changer in the health care space.
Primary Care Physician Follow up (Cerner PowerChart Ambulatory)
Upon her follow up visit to her primary care physician, Gloria’s doctor will query and retrieve relevant health information on Gloria’s stay both in the hospital and from the home care setting. Her PCP location will be automatically linked so that any updates at the PCP will now be available to the other care organizations ongoing. This helps the PCP, who is most likely the consistent and ongoing provider in Gloria’s life, the ability to truly coordinate her care most effectively.
In any situation, when one person is handed off to another (think about the last time you got transferred during a customer service call in any industry – cable, telephone, power), information is lost, and you have to start over. This can be time consuming, costly and dangerous when it comes to your health care.
As attendees will see in these live demos, CommonWell is helping to ensure smooth care transitions so people like Gloria can go about living their life and not worry about taking care of their health alone.
From our use of Correlated Linking, FHIR and built-in solutions, we are changing the game when it comes to interoperability and health data exchange. We hope you can stop by the CommonWell Care Transitions booth at the HIMSS17 Interoperability Showcase (Booth 9000) and see our work in action. Live demonstrations will take place at 15 minutes past the hour during Exhibition open hours.
Gary Bartlett, Brightree, and Mike Warner, Cerner, will be two of the presenters in the Interoperability Showcase next week at HIMSS17 in Orlando.