Getting Beyond the Electronic Health Record
Posted by Devon Brackbill, PhD on October 12, 2017
Managing our ACO patients requires getting information beyond the EHR.
A major challenge for an ACO is coordinating care for our patients across multiple health systems. While EPIC is invaluable for tracking how a patient interacts with Cooper University Health Care, it does not record everything that happens when our patients interact with other health systems. As a result, it can be difficult to find real-time, actionable information so that care coordinators can support our patients when they are discharged from a hospital stay outside of Cooper.
When we looked at inpatient admissions for AllCare Health Alliance patients in 2016, we were surprised to find that only one out of three admissions occurred at Cooper University Hospital. If we only relied on Cooper’s Electronic Health Record (EHR), we would miss two out of every three admissions. We had to find a way to get timely, actionable information about admissions to other hospitals in the area.
Inpatient Admissions in 2016: Only 1/3 Admissions Happened At Cooper
For that reason, we partnered with the Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers [link: https://www.camdenhealth.org/] to supplement our discharge reports with information from the Camden Health Information Exchange (Camden HIE). By adding hospital admissions from Virtua Health System, Kennedy Health, and Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center, we were able to have real-time information for 77% of all admissions, a 133% increase in coverage!
The HIE Integration Increased Our Line of Sight to Virtua, Kennedy, and Lourdes
By integrating Cooper’s EHR data with the HIE feed, our care coordinators now have access to timely, valuable information about hospital admissions in health systems throughout our region. This data is integrated into daily discharges reports so that we can manage care no matter where a patient’s admission occurs.
With this new data visibility, we are empowering our care team to provide more comprehensive coverage for our patients and their families, no matter where they interact with the health system. One team, one purpose.
