Aug 2007
HIMSS RHIO Connection
"Santa Cruz HIE Passes Milestone"
Bill Beighe CIO,
Physicians Medical
Group
Just up the coast from the now dissolved Santa Barbara HIE, is the region of Santa Cruz, California, a community that has been exchanging health information since 1995. The Santa Cruz health information exchange recently exceeded a milestone of a million physician and staff interactions, per month based on web traffic to the exchange. "Traffic has increased five fold since 2002" said Bill Beighe CIO of Physicians Medical Group (PMG) of Santa Cruz.
The HIE initiative, started by the local IPA – Physicians Medical Group, included a hospital, two local labs and a few area physicians that used Axolotl’s Web-based solution to exchange clinical results and build a community patient index. In the last ten years the HIE has expanded to include two full-service hospitals, the Santa Cruz County Public Health Services Agency (SCCHSA), four outpatient laboratories, five independent radiology imaging centers, and safety net clinics such as Santa Cruz Women's Health Center, Planned Parenthood, and Salud Para la Gente. The communities’ patient index includes 95% of the population.
Hospitals and labs have replaced their report distribution systems. Physicians exchange clinical reports, lab and radiology results, process lab orders, write and renew electronic prescriptions and securely communicate with their colleagues using a Elysium’s EMR Lite application provided through the IPA. Physician groups have their own clinical database in which they manage their office workflow, with patient data aggregated from all the sources. Many physician practices use a transcription service that is integrated with the exchange so their office notes are returned into their Clinical Inbox.
In 1997 Santa Cruz HIE expanded the exchange using additional services from Axolotl Corp. The expansion included a bi-directional exchange for lab orders and results between SCCHSA’s Epic EHR installation and added SureScripts connectivity - expanding physician adoption of ePrescribing. |
