Beacon HIE Programs Share Records, Improve Efficiency
By Katie Wike, contributing writer
Beacon programs showing HIEs provide value for healthcare industry
Beacon Community Programs were established in 2010 in 17 communities to increase the quality, efficiency, and sustainability of healthcare through health information technology. As the program is winding down, a look at the results shows it proved - according to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) - Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) are a valuable tool in collecting and managing health records.
An EHR Intelligence article quotes Farzad Mostashari, MD, ScM, head of the ONC, as saying one of the lessons learned was, “Sell people what they want to buy. Figure out what is the lightest weight, cheapest, most effective information exchange solution that meets someone’s actual business need today and focus on that and build value as you go along.” Mostashari went on to say of the program, it is now time “to start bringing those learnings together in a way that can be used more readily.”
Healthbiz Decoded reports that some of the best and most successful stories have come out of the San Diego branch, writing, “They developed and implemented the first Health Information Exchange (HIE), online data networks that connect patients’ electronic health records from different health systems, in Southern California.”
Dr. Jim Killeen of the University of California San Diego and a technical lead of the Beacon project, is quoted by Healthbiz Decoded as saying, ““Our main goals for the Beacon project were improving cardiovascular care in the acute care phase, creating an Emergency Medical Services hub which translates the electronic version of the patient care record from paramedics that can be imported into any EMR in any hospital. We can send an EKG from wherever it was taken, at home or in the truck, to the hospital so it arrives before the patient. That way the cardiologist can hone in on resources, and the computer reads the scan in real time before the patient arrives.”
Killeen also pointed out, “In some participating hospitals the tool actually reduced false positive activations from 30 percent down to zero percent, a huge improvement. That means fewer unnecessary cardiac catheterizations, which saves money, time and pain for the patient.”