A rural hospital in Missouri was able to maximize its health IT and health information exchange connections to battle its COVID-19 hotspot.
A small, non-profit hospital, located in a rural town of roughly 15,000 people, was confronted with the most COVID-19 cases per capita in Missouri.
But while most rural hospitals face health IT and patient data exchange challenges, Fitzgibbon Hospital dropped its barriers and was able to test upwards of 30 to 50 individuals per day from across the “Show-Me State.”
Only 62 percent of small and rural hospitals share information through a health information exchange (HIE). However, Fitzgibbon is connected to a multitude of HIEs to increase interoperability and enhance patient data exchange in its area.
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“For the past seven years, Fitzgibbon has been connected to health information exchanges,” Tom Jones, chief information officer at Fitzgibbon Hospital, said in an interview with EHRIntelligence.
“We were the second adopter in the state of Missouri to be live on a hospital system. Even before we were on our current EHR technology, our motto has always been that we want to be able to connect that patient anywhere; from anywhere, to anywhere. So, we have been a proponent of data exchange.”
Because of their national connection through CommonWell, along with connections to Missouri’s three regional HIEs, the rural hospital has been able to test individuals from 29 Missouri counties without missing a beat.
“With a click of a button, we can pull up anything you need to see from that continuum of care for that patient,” Jones explained. “We have actually seen patients that were tested for COVID-19 at other providers. By looking at and analyzing their data, we were able to track those patients using EHR alerts to say whether this patient is COVID-19 positive.”
Through May, the 60-bed hospital tested roughly 2,500 individuals for COVID-19, most of which face social determinants of health challenges. Utilizing its Cerner EHR system, Fitzgibbon was able to quickly register these individuals and give them much-needed COVID-19 information following the test.
The EHR vendor also helped the hospital staff access and report on data to make quick patient care decisions.
“We quickly started to internally develop reports from our EHR system,” Jones said. “We were able to pool a lot of data using our different analytic tools. These tools allowed us to build reports that we could pull or send to people on a daily basis about our COVID-19 testing.”
Source: EHR Intelligence