Carol Burrows

Previously, Columbus Regional Health would have had to review within their EHR system every qualifying discharged patient and pull up their summary of care. They would then have to manually send it to that patient’s primary care physician for follow-up care. It was an inefficient and time consuming process.
Additionally, IHIE sends a monthly report to CRH that captures the CCD delivery rate, which serves to validate that they are meeting the requirements of this particular Meaningful Use Stage 2 requirements and is done because it’s just good for patient care.
Columbus Regional Health
Clinical setting: Population Health
- Meets Meaningful Use Stage 2 requirements
- Works within existing workflow
- IHIE has worked with customers to streamline information in the CCD, making it more useful
The Continuity of Care service is a very smooth operation.
The Continuity of Care Service saves us a bunch of time and resources. They’ve really done their clients a favor.
Situation:
Jill, a woman in her 50’s is prescribed a blood thinner by her primary care physician. She becomes ill with pneumonia and is hospitalized. At the end of her hospital stay, she receives her discharge medication orders, but at a different dose than what was prescribed by her physician.
Benefits:
When her physician receives a continuity of care document from the hospital, he notices that she was given instructions to take double the amount of blood thinner medication her primary care doctor prescribed. The CCD enabled Jill’s physician to make sure the error was corrected and avoid potentially serious consequences to the patient.
What it Means:
Proper transitions of care, when patients move from one setting to another, is one of the most difficult hurdles in healthcare to overcome. Researchers have estimated that inadequate care coordination, including inadequate management of care transitions, was responsible for $25 to $45 billion in wasteful spending in 2011 through avoidable complications and unnecessary hospital readmissions.