Earlier this month, five organizations launched the Care Connectivity Consortium to facilitate the secure exchange of electronic data in real-time at facilities across the country. The vision, according to Kaiser Permanente EVP and CIO Phil Fasano, is for providers to have all of a patient’s information at his or her fingertips during the encounter. But before that vision can be realized, there are a few key questions that need to be answered, primarily in terms of reimbursement and standardization. In this interview, Fasano talks about how the nation’s largest non-for-profit health plan and care provider plans to deal with the reimbursement issue, how it is preparing for Meaningful Use, how it handles budgeting and project prioritization, and why data sharing is so important.
“If a Kaiser patient happened to show up in Group Health’s offices and needed care, the physician he is seeing would have the ability—after being granted some immediate permission by that patient—to access their medical record… so that they’d have the facts that they need and the background they need to provide world-class healthcare.”
“If we agree on standards and we agree on the information that’s necessary to exchange to be the basic elements that are necessary when treating patients, ultimately we can exchange that data.”
“What activities like the Care Connectivity Consortium force us to do is converge many of those standards, so that as we exchange information, we’re confident in the quality, the integrity, and the security of the information, and we’re confident that we can reliably exchange interoperate between systems.”
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“I believe we’re going to be successful because we have a common goal. And the goal is that we want, as organizations, the best health care possible for our patients, regardless of whether our patients are in our system or somewhere else in the country and requiring care.”
via Phil Fasano, EVP/CIO, Kaiser Permanente, Transcript/Podcast Chapter 1 | healthsystemcio.com.