Doctors in emergency departments across central and northeast Pennsylvania are now able to use the Keystone Health Information Exchange (KeyHIE) to access a patient’s heart monitoring results from Geisinger wherever or whenever the patient receives care.
According to Charles Sawyer, M.D., Chief Health Information Officer at the Geisinger Health System, “It is important to provide physicians with nearly real-time information about a patient’s heart condition, including results from ECGs, Holter monitoring, and stress tests which is critical to ensuring that a patient receives the right care at the right time.”
KeyHIE is one of the oldest and largest computer-based HIE in the U.S. and serves more than 4 million patients through a network of 22 hospitals, 174 physician practices, 28 home health locations and 61 long-term care facilities in more than 53 Pennsylvania counties. The system provides patient health information on drug allergies, prescriptions, medical conditions, and lab and test results to healthcare providers.
Also, in a partnership with hundreds of participating providers, KeyHIE has formed partnerships and now offers patient-consented access to more than 4.5 million EHRs through a single online login.
In other HIE news, Craig Hospital located in Colorado a specialty rehabilitation hospital that has treated 30,000 patients from 50 states is now participating in the Colorado Regional Health Information Organization (CORHIO) HIE network.
Craig Hospital is renowned as a premier center for specialty rehabilitation for people with spinal cord injuries and TBIs. Often an individual with a brain or spinal cord injury will have been through a traumatic accident and will initially be taken to an emergency room or an acute care hospital. At the hospital, the person is stabilized and may be there for many days while undergoing various tests, surgeries, and therapies.
After the person is stabilized, their recovery and rehabilitation may progress more quickly at a specialty care facility. The CORHIO HIE helps to make sure that the clinical information recorded in the patient’s EHR is securely transferred to Craig Hospital
Through the HIE connection, patients are able to have smoother transitions and are at lower risk for complications, because their EMRs will immediately be available as the patient transitions to their new facility enabling the new care team to more quickly develop a treatment plan.
CORHIO is in the process of expanding their network of healthcare providers and is actively working to connect an additional 15 hospitals, more than 900 office-based providers, 41 long-term and post-acute care providers, three large laboratories, and seven behavioral health centers