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
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