PROBLEM

Three years ago, the collaboration between Hancock Regional Health and IHIE had been limited to the sending of information for their physician clinical results. HRH was anxious to move forward with several projects that allowed them to adhere to state and federal population health reporting mandates. Their IT management looked to IHIE to help them come up with a streamlined solution that would meet these requirements while providing other value added benefits.

SOLUTION

IHIE worked with HRH to map and match specific procedures and lab tests so that if they were a reportable result, they were in line with the common terminology used within the IHIE network. This common dictionary enabled HRH to submit electronic syndromic surveillance data from their emergency departments through the IHIE network without building a separate interface to the state department of health, utilizing their existing connection with IHIE and leveraging other value added benefits that IHIE provides their population health customers.One of these value added benefits that IHIE is the notifiable condition detection (NCD) tool, which streamlined HRH’s timeline to meet the particular federal requirements for syndromic surveillance reporting. Since IHIE already receives labs from HRH, specific ones related to contagious diseases and other required labs are scanned by IHIE, which then are automatically sent on to the department of health on behalf of HRH.

IDENTIFIER

E. Rush & J. Morin
IT Professionals
Hancock Regional Health
Clinical setting: Population Health – Notifiable Conditions Detection and Syndromic Surveillance, IT Organization

BENEFITS

  • Customers can utilize existing feed to IHIE without creating separate feeds to state department of health
  • IHIE routes communications between customer and department of health; advocate for customers when needed
  • Help desk benefits – 24 x 7 x 365 support with real life support.
  • Shared values and goals with our customers provides ongoing relationship and support
  • Project management tools that can serve multiple functions within customer’s IT departments

QUOTES

“Getting the notifiable conditions detection tool alone was worth the price of participation, let alone all the other support IHIE provides its customers to comply with Meaningful Use.”

CASE STUDY

  • Situation: Notifiable diseases are reported to help collect statistics of how often specific disease outbreaks occur. This helps researchers identify disease trends and can help control future outbreaks. This responsibility falls to clinicians who diagnose these illnesses, which adds to their daily tasks, and requires more responsibility of the IT professionals who support these clinicians.
  • Benefits: Partnering with IHIE on the notifiable diseases detection tool unburdens the clinicians and the supporting IT personnel, and makes use of existing connections to the state department of health, which is the entity that collects and aggregates this information.
  • What it Means: IHIE is able to provide this tool in conjunction with other value-added benefits to its customers such as acting as go-between to the state department of health to address interface issues, and provide 24x7x365 support.