Community Healthcare System’s health record system has gone completely paperless and fully interoperable. And its chief medical information officer says its patients are better for it.
“We’re able to see things about our patients that other systems won’t be able to see, because they don’t have this level of operability,” said Community’s Dr. Alan Kumar. He said the data is used to spot disease trends and to help doctors diagnose patients more quickly.
Community Healthcare System recently got the highest award possible from HIMSS Analytics, a Chicago-based health IT company that evaluates electronic medical records nationwide. The hospital system is among the 5 percent of U.S. hospitals, and the only one in Northwest Indiana, to receive HIMSS’ Stage 7 Award from HIMSS, which goes to networks that are interoperable and paperless.
Community Healthcare System is also currently preparing two case studies on the best practices for using electronic medical records. One involves how Community Hospital utilized its network to identify everyone who had come into contact with a patient with Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS, the first such case in the U.S. The other touches on the hospital system’s New Healthy Me digital employee wellness program, which has led to health insurance cost savings and health improvements among staff members.
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Kumar noted that while Indiana’s health information exchange only includes inpatient medical records, Community’s system has information on its patients’ inpatient and outpatient visits alike. The database is used by all its hospitals — Community Hospital in Munster, St. Catherine Hospital in East Chicago and St. Mary Medical Center in Hobart — and providers.
And he said the only time Community deals in paper records is when they come from outside the hospital system.
“The holy grail is this interoperability in all levels of the charting, and the data analytics; being able to take the data and look for commonalities that people can’t see physically,” Kumar said.
Date: December 31, 2015