The Oregon Health Information Technology Oversight Council’s (HITOC) report www.oregon.gov/oha/ohpr/hitocPages/index.aspx provides updates on the state’s health IT efforts. The Oregon Health Authority (OHA) has made progress moving telehealth forward in the state.
Through a partnership with the Office of Rural Health, five telehealth grants were initiated to provide help in teledentistry, telepsychiatry, community paramedics, telepharmacy, and distance cognitive testing for dementia patients. Four of the five grants have been completed and have submitted final reports and final presentations.
The community paramedic pilot was extended until March 2017. This project’s focus is to reduce hospital readmissions related to gaps in care between the hospital and primary care or specialty management.
Adventist Tillamook Medical Health Group put a high speed data connectivity in each ambulance to support direct and real time communication with rural health clinics. Hospital-based Community Paramedics (CP) visit patients identified as at-risk for hospital readmission due to lack of post-discharge follow up.
In Oregon, OpenNotes supports healthcare organizations working with their EHR vendors to make the full clinician notes available through their EHR’s patient portal called “We Can Do Better’s” which is the Northwest OpenNotes Consortium www.wecandobetter.org.
The Medicaid EHR Incentive Program now offers qualifying Oregon Medicaid providers federally funded financial incentives for the adoption of certified EHRs.
Pediatric optometrists were approved to be an eligible professional type by CMS last December, however, naturopathic physicians were rejected by CMS. OHIT has been working on outreach efforts to maximize participation.
CareAccord www.careaccord.org a nationally accredited Health Information Service provider, provides direct secure messaging services serving more than 160 organizations with more than 1,400 users. Their Direct exchange transactions nearly tripled in 2016 and is expected to increase further in 2017.
The Emergency Department Information Exchange (EDIE), which is a web-based application allowing emergency departments to identify patients with complex care needs frequently using the ED www.oregon.gov/oha/Transformation-Center/Documents/1D-HIT-Kirchoff.pdf.
EDIE’s PreManage expands the services in EDIE to other users such as health plans, Coordinated Care Organizations (CCO), medical groups, and/or physicians to improve communication. PreManage adoption has continued to increase across Oregon with nine CCOs going live, and five additional CCOs now in the process of adoption, plus a number of Dental Care Organizations are live with two more expected soon.
Oregon’s Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP) www.ordmp.com is connecting EDIE, HIEs, EHRs and other health IT systems to the Oregon PDMP which is currently negotiating a contract with Appriss, the gateway vendor to provide connectivity with the goal to connect to Appriss gateway by spring 2017.