Interoperability in Real Life

On Monday afternoon my wife was speaking with my 82 year old father-in-law, when he began speaking in word salad - not slurring his words, but clearly speaking words that made no sense.   He had no numbness or weakness, no confusion, and no change in consciousness.  After 5 minutes all symptoms resolved.My wife called me and after hearing the history, I knew he was having a transient ischemic attack (TIA).   Given that he was stable, I recommended that we coordinate an immediate hospitalization at a site suggested by his primary care physician (PCP) rather than take an ambulance to a random nearby location.     My wife called his PCP and was given a choice of two hospitals - one with IT systems I control and one with IT systems I do not.   She drove him to the hospital that offered care coordination via interoperable IT systems.My father-in-law has records at 3 locations - an academic medical center (home built EHR), a community hospital (Meditech), and a multi-speciality practice group affiliated with but not owned by BIDMC (Epic).Upon arrival at the Emergency Department, he had a blood pressure of 180/90.   The physician asked - what is his baseline blood pressure and has it varied over the past 6 months?   The physician clicked on the external records link we’ve placed in Meditech and he immediately viewed my father-in-law’s blood pressures in his PCP's Epic system.  He then asked about recently specialty care.  One cli...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - Category: Technology Consultants Source Type: blogs