Dr. Henry Plummer’s “simple, easily retrievable medical record system” is getting an evolutionary revamp that Mayo Clinic says will last for the next several decades.
Mayo announced Tuesday it has chosen healthcare-software developer Epic as a strategic partner to combine the clinic’s three current electronic health-record systems into a single, unified set of programs that will ease the transfer of patients’ medical information.
Also integrated into the new system will be a revenue management system.
“Interoperability is one of the major challenges facing us today in health care in the United States,” Dr. Dawn Milliner, Mayo’s chief medical-information officer, said in a 2012 Youtube video produced by the clinic. “We’re in a position of having all of this information electronically accessible. But we can’t communicate across our organizations.”
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In recent years, patients traveling from one Mayo site to another have been frustrated — as have been health providers — that medical records in their home location couldn’t be made available in Rochester, Arizona or Florida. Sometimes, software programs don’t even allow new data entries to travel from one building to the next without being uploaded by hand or electronically with separate programs.
All of that takes time, which can hamper medical service.
That will all change, pending approval of the Mayo Clinic Trustees, who must first sign off on the partnership with Epic. More than 45,000 Mayo employees will be trained to use the new system nationwide.
The new system aims to save money, cut errors and simplify patient-health provider relationships, especially for those who travel from long distances or from one test or department to another.
The Affordable Care Act has made easily portable electronic medical records a high priority, and Mayo’s new, unified system likely will be studied by health systems nationwide as they, too, attempt to implement new systems.
Mayo has long emphasized the need for an electronic medical record for all health providers that can be used by any patient, anywhere in the country.
Mayo in recent years has provided examples of the importance of such rapid access to patient information. In 2012, a Mayo patient who had chest pressure indicating a blockage in an implanted stent was saved because medical residents who happened to be in the same locker room had access to his medical records via an iPad.
That type of life-or-death situation is not an everyday occurrence when it comes to medical records. But, statistically, such rescues are sure to happen again with Mayo’s new system.
Verona, Wis.-based Epic is an employee-owned company that focuses on “responsible development, patient safety, interoperability and data portability, clinical and billing accuracy, privacy and security and patient engagement,” according to its website.
Coordination yields the best health-care quality, according to Mayo.
“With our staff working together on a common system, we will be able to accelerate innovation, enhance services and provide a better experience for our patients,” Milliner said in her Tuesday announcement.
This is the final step in Mayo Clinic preparing to jettison altogether methods of transferring thick paper files, X-rays and documentation. Originally, Mayo used a ledger system. A patient’s information was entered into a ledger after each visit. But when the patient returned, doctors had to find and consult the original ledger.
“On July 1, 1907, Dr. Henry Plummer and Mabel Root, Dr. Plummer’s assistant, inaugurated Mayo’s system of patient registration and medical record keeping,” says an online Mayo historical biography of Plummer’s contribution. “The single-unit record was central to the new system. It brought together all of a patient’s records — clinical visits, hospital stays, laboratory tests and notes — in a single file that traveled with the patient and was stored in a central repository. This simple system quickly became the standard for medical record keeping around the world.”
Date: January 21, 2015