Focused on restoring the state’s healthcare infrastructure post-Hurricane Katrina, Information & Quality Healthcare (IQH), the Medicare quality improvement organization for Mississippi, announced today that it has selected Medicity Inc., to connect the Mississippi Coastal Health Information Exchange (MSCHIE). As the market leader and one of the select Alpha Network Certification Process participants in the CCHIT certification process for health information exchanges (HIEs), Medicity delivers real-time clinical data exchange among all healthcare providers to improve patient outcomes and patient-provider relationships while reducing healthcare costs resulting from inefficiencies, medical errors and incomplete patient information.
“After thoroughly evaluating half a dozen vendors, we chose Medicity because of its proven track record in successfully launching clinical data exchanges in Delaware and California,” said James S. McIlwain, M.D., president and CEO of IQH. “The success of this HIE is critical as it will impact the future development of an expansive state-wide health information exchange.”
Initially, five provider organizations located in a six-county coastal area that was battered by Hurricane Katrina in August 2005 will share data over the MSCHIE. Authorized clinicians will be able to access aggregated patient clinical information integrated from disparate systems, from any location, 24×7, via Medicity’s MediTrust interoperability platform and ProAccess clinical applications suite.
Dr. McIIwain, who in March 2007 was named co-chair of the Mississippi Health Information Infrastructure Technology Task Force by Governor Haley Barbour added, “To implement MSCHIE, IQH will collaborate closely with the state-appointed task force. The state has been keenly interested in using information technologies to facilitate clinical data exchange and ensure a community-based continuity of care record ever since Katrina damaged the healthcare infrastructure along the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. The absence of detailed patient histories and medical records put the citizens of Mississippi at risk and created an information vacuum for physicians and nurses as they sought to provide high-quality healthcare in a variety of care settings across the state.”
Medicity’s MediTrust and ProAccess solutions, installed in a hosted, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model will provide the MSCHIE with a secure interoperability platform, enabling clinicians to access community-based patient health records, clinical messaging and e-consultation, medical claims, medication history and more. The Medicity interoperability platform, community master patient index and EMR gateway facilitate the exchange of clinical data to and from EMRs, hospital information systems and ancillary systems such as lab, radiology, pathology, transcription, etc.
“Medicity’s technology was developed to support our nation’s healthcare goals of interconnecting clinicians and healthcare organizations, encouraging physician adoption of EMRs, personalizing care through online personal health records, and improving public health through tracking and analysis of regional and national patient data trends,” said Kipp Lassetter, M.D., CEO of Medicity. “By sharing secure data on a daily basis, MSCHIE participants will enhance the overall continuity of care, reduce costs and ensure vital, up-to-date information are available to clinicians at the point-of-care.”
MSCHIE will initially deploy Medicity solutions in a centralized model to maximize sharing of clinical information across participants, but expects to expand to include Medicity’s Record Locating Service (RLS) to support those stakeholders across the state that would like to participate under a confederated or hybrid architecture model. MSCHIE’s approach also leverages Medicity’s security management, patient matching, clinical data indexing, retrieval and display. By integrating patient data from many disparate data sources, MSCHIE participants can improve healthcare outcomes by eliminating unnecessary tests and procedures, enabling more efficient clinical workflow for physicians and nurses and improve patient safety by reducing medical errors.
About Information & Quality Healthcare
Information & Quality Healthcare (IQH) is the Medicare Quality Improvement Organization for Mississippi. By serving as a resource to the state’s healthcare providers and to the Medicare beneficiaries, IQH seeks to fulfill its vision to be a leader in promoting a quality and cost-effective healthcare system. For more information please visit www.iqh.org.
About Medicity
With a single point of access to multiple data sources within and across healthcare enterprises, Medicity, Inc. empowers patients, providers and health plans with essential healthcare information, resulting in improved clinical workflow, enhanced patient safety and reduced costs. Medicity, Inc. serves more than 1,800 healthcare organizations globally and has been connecting healthcare since 1998. For more information please visit www.medicity.com.
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