Hospital-to-hospital health information exchange begins

Apr 1 2009

LifeBridge Health has begun an electronic exchange of health information between its two hospitals, Sinai Hospital of Baltimore and Northwest Hospital, and Saint Agnes Hospital, a community hospital with an overlapping service area.

When patients arrive at Sinai, Northwest or Saint Agnes hospitals, an electronic query is sent to the other organization requesting clinical information. Any clinical information that is electronically available is returned to the requesting hospital in less than three minutes.

This health information exchange (HIE) is the first example of a hospital-to-hospital exchange in Maryland. The exchange allows for the standards-based exchange of clinical summaries that were based upon the Continuity of Care Document (CCD). The solution is entirely built on HealthUnity's HIE software and Microsoft's NET platform and servers.

LifeBridge Health utilizes Cerner's PowerChart as its electronic medical record (EMR) platform, and Saint Agnes Hospital uses Meditech for its EMR. LifeBridge Health received a grant from CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield to fund this project.
"Our HIE project is a unique partnership between two leading providers and funded by a major payer. We demonstrated in a short period of time the interoperability between different information technologies used by two independent provider organizations," said Karen Barker, vice president and CIO for LifeBridge Health.

The system is completely automated allowing for standards-based clinical summary exchange to support continuity of care between providers without negatively impacting their workflow.

"HealthUnity has proven to be a capable and innovative partner helping us implement our HIE in an extremely short period of time," Barker continued.

"Reliable and secure electronic exchange of patient information among hospitals and physicians is recognized as a critical tool for improving the quality and safety of health care delivery. This solution allows us to start small and build on our successes," said William Greskovich, vice president and CIO for Saint Agnes Hospital.

"This is one more successful implementation of HealthUnity's HIE solution," said Prem Urali, CEO of HealthUnity Corp. "Having the best technology for building HIEs allows us to deploy large provider customers in the shortest possible time and in a cost-effective manner. We will continue to strive to meet the highest expectations of our customers. We are proud to be a key member of this exchange."

LifeBridge Health is a regional health organization that includes Sinai Hospital of Baltimore, Northwest Hospital, Levindale Hebrew Geriatric Center and Hospital, Jewish Convalescent & Nursing Home, and related subsidiaries and affiliates. For more information, visit www.LifeBridgeHealth.org.

Saint Agnes Hospital is a 307-bed hospital founded by the Daughters of Charity in 1862. Saint Agnes is a full-service teaching hospital with residency programs in a number of medical and surgical specialties. Key services include the Saint Agnes Cancer Center and Center for Blood Disorders, the Chest Pain Emergency Center, the Bariatric Center of Excellence, Joint and Spine Care, Cardiovascular Services, Women's Health Services, and Seton Medical Group. Saint Agnes is a member of Ascension Health, the largest nonprofit health care organization in the nation. Ascension Health is dedicated to reaching new heights in health care and service to communities, as well as serving as a model for faith-based health care throughout the world. For more information on Saint Agnes HealthCare, visit http://www.stagnes.org.

HealthUnity, founded in 2004, is widely recognized as the best solution for building integrated health information exchanges and health record banks. HealthUnity has several deployments across the United States. With this, HealthUnity has three successful HIE implementations in the state of Maryland alone. HealthUnity provides solutions for RHIOs, health information exchanges and health record banks. HealthUnity has prebuilt adapters for several clinical systems from vendors such as Cerner, GE and Meditech and connectors for patient portals such as Cerner Health, Microsoft HealthVault and Google Health.