Mission Critical: Utilizing Technology to Advance Healthcare Interoperability

The following is a guest article by Dan Torrens, CEO at eHealth Technologies

Health information management teams everywhere are constantly doing more, but somehow it always feels like playing catch up.

Notably, between 30 and 47 percent of U.S. hospitals still rely on fax or mail to send and receive patient records. Only 40 percent of hospitals electronically integrate data from other hospitals outside of their system and only a distressing 30 percent of skilled nursing facilities exchange data outside of their walls.

That adds up to a lot of additional work for staff chasing down medical records, valuable time wasted for providers who don’t have complete medical histories, and frustration for patients as they must wait for what feels like endless additional days or even weeks while critical appointments are delayed waiting on medical records.

While many healthcare systems have moved away from mail, phone, and fax for medical records transfer, it’s clear that not enough have taken advantage of available technologies to maximize healthcare interoperability.

Using Technology to Standardize Processes and Ensure Precision

A major comprehensive cancer center located in Virginia serves a substantial population of cancer patients needing complex treatment plans and requiring ongoing monitoring and management. To help enhance patient care and improve health outcomes, the cancer center brought in additional oncology specialists and expanded into satellite clinics.

The challenge: the center required the highest level of safety, accuracy, and security when updating and processing patient records, but also needed to improve and standardize medical records requests across the hospital system.

The solution: the cancer center partnered with an advanced technology solutions provider to develop new processes and workflows for records requests. The processes were standardized to be efficient, but also customizable to meet the unique needs of each specialty unit.

The result was that every records request has a similar look and feel so clinicians know where to go and that the correct records are being requested.

At the same time processes were standardized, it was important to maintain a high level of precision. Leaving too much for a provider’s staff or medical records department to decipher leads to incomplete records. Utilizing advanced technology solutions, providers were delivered what they really needed, eliminating the time formerly used sifting through duplicate or irrelevant information.

Since adopting advanced technology to boost their healthcare interoperability efforts, patients at the cancer center are now seen more quickly, a complete medical history is available within the clinical workflow, allowing staff to focus solely on the patient and the hospital has seen a significant increase in revenue.

How Technology can Enhance Healthcare Interoperability

Financial systems across the world effectively use technology to conduct complex, secure transactions every day. It’s well past time for the American healthcare system to embrace technology to decrease time to treatment and increase patient and provider satisfaction.

Here’s just one example of how it can work: 

• Patient Receives a Referral, Also Known as a Record Request
• Advanced Technologies Expedite the Collection of Medical Records, Images, and Pathology Materials 
• Technology Clinically Organizes the Records and Materials to Simplify the Review Process for Clinicians
• Complete and Actionable Documents are Securely Delivered Electronically to the Workflow 
• Care Team can Rapidly Create a Care Plan

When a patient receives a referral, meaningful, productive appointments cannot occur if little to no medical history is available for a patient. Burdening patients and staff with the collection of these records delays the scheduling of that critical first visit costing precious days, weeks, or more.

Utilizing innovative technology solutions allows healthcare organizations to schedule patients sooner with the confidence that vital records will be ready to go, eliminate rescheduling of first appointments due to the lack of required medical history, and prevent patient leakage by getting the patient into the system sooner. A secure, streamlined process also builds all-important patient trust.

As with all interoperability challenges, managing medical record retrieval and organization can vary wildly across healthcare systems and specialty areas. Utilizing technology, particularly narrow AI, identifies inefficiencies in the process, allows for improvements, and creates metrics to track the improved processes. When outcomes are reliable and predictable, medical personnel and patients are more satisfied.

Physicians, in particular, experience a great deal of frustration when their high-value time is wasted parsing irrelevant or poorly organized information. Navigating data clutter within a patient’s chart is a leading cause of care team dissatisfaction. The addition of specialized technology solutions can achieve clinically organized records delivered directly to a system’s medical records system.

Every Moment is Priceless – Technology Saves Precious Time

Healthcare systems embracing technology to advance healthcare interoperability are: 

• Improving Patient Experiences by Decreasing the Time from Referral to Treatment
• Providing Clinically Organized Medical Histories to Providers, Making their Time More Meaningful and Effective, Allowing Them to Quickly Assess a Patient and Determine the Right Care Plan
• Streamlining the Records Retrieval Process, Eliminating Headaches for Administrators, and Allowing Them to Spend More Time Directly Supporting Patients
• Improving the Bottom Line for Healthcare Systems, Reducing Patient Leakage

Healthcare interoperability matters. It’s our best opportunity to enhance patient outcomes and provider satisfaction. Using technology can significantly reduce the time it takes for patients to benefit from advanced treatment options and quickly embark on a path to recovery.

It’s well past time for hospitals and healthcare systems across the U.S. to leave faxing and CDs of data in the past and take advantage of innovative technologies that save time and can even save lives. 

About Dan Torrens

Dan Torrens is CEO of eHealth Technologies, a leading healthcare technology company that decreases time to treatment by quickly delivering requested and actionable medical histories to clinicians.

The following is a guest article by Dan Torrens, CEO at eHealth Technologies

Health information management teams everywhere are constantly doing more, but somehow it always feels like playing catch up.

Notably, between 30 and 47 percent of U.S. hospitals still rely on fax or mail to send and receive patient records. Only 40 percent of hospitals electronically integrate data from other hospitals outside of their system and only a distressing 30 percent of skilled nursing facilities exchange data outside of their walls.

That adds up to a lot of additional work for staff chasing down medical records, valuable time wasted for providers who don’t have complete medical histories, and frustration for patients as they must wait for what feels like endless additional days or even weeks while critical appointments are delayed waiting on medical records.

While many healthcare systems have moved away from mail, phone, and fax for medical records transfer, it’s clear that not enough have taken advantage of available technologies to maximize healthcare interoperability.

Using Technology to Standardize Processes and Ensure Precision

A major comprehensive cancer center located in Virginia serves a substantial population of cancer patients needing complex treatment plans and requiring ongoing monitoring and management. To help enhance patient care and improve health outcomes, the cancer center brought in additional oncology specialists and expanded into satellite clinics.

The challenge: the center required the highest level of safety, accuracy, and security when updating and processing patient records, but also needed to improve and standardize medical records requests across the hospital system.

The solution: the cancer center partnered with an advanced technology solutions provider to develop new processes and workflows for records requests. The processes were standardized to be efficient, but also customizable to meet the unique needs of each specialty unit.

The result was that every records request has a similar look and feel so clinicians know where to go and that the correct records are being requested.

At the same time processes were standardized, it was important to maintain a high level of precision. Leaving too much for a provider’s staff or medical records department to decipher leads to incomplete records. Utilizing advanced technology solutions, providers were delivered what they really needed, eliminating the time formerly used sifting through duplicate or irrelevant information.

Since adopting advanced technology to boost their healthcare interoperability efforts, patients at the cancer center are now seen more quickly, a complete medical history is available within the clinical workflow, allowing staff to focus solely on the patient and the hospital has seen a significant increase in revenue.

How Technology can Enhance Healthcare Interoperability

Financial systems across the world effectively use technology to conduct complex, secure transactions every day. It’s well past time for the American healthcare system to embrace technology to decrease time to treatment and increase patient and provider satisfaction.

Here’s just one example of how it can work: 

• Patient Receives a Referral, Also Known as a Record Request
• Advanced Technologies Expedite the Collection of Medical Records, Images, and Pathology Materials 
• Technology Clinically Organizes the Records and Materials to Simplify the Review Process for Clinicians
• Complete and Actionable Documents are Securely Delivered Electronically to the Workflow 
• Care Team can Rapidly Create a Care Plan

When a patient receives a referral, meaningful, productive appointments cannot occur if little to no medical history is available for a patient. Burdening patients and staff with the collection of these records delays the scheduling of that critical first visit costing precious days, weeks, or more.

Utilizing innovative technology solutions allows healthcare organizations to schedule patients sooner with the confidence that vital records will be ready to go, eliminate rescheduling of first appointments due to the lack of required medical history, and prevent patient leakage by getting the patient into the system sooner. A secure, streamlined process also builds all-important patient trust.

As with all interoperability challenges, managing medical record retrieval and organization can vary wildly across healthcare systems and specialty areas. Utilizing technology, particularly narrow AI, identifies inefficiencies in the process, allows for improvements, and creates metrics to track the improved processes. When outcomes are reliable and predictable, medical personnel and patients are more satisfied.

Physicians, in particular, experience a great deal of frustration when their high-value time is wasted parsing irrelevant or poorly organized information. Navigating data clutter within a patient’s chart is a leading cause of care team dissatisfaction. The addition of specialized technology solutions can achieve clinically organized records delivered directly to a system’s medical records system.

Every Moment is Priceless – Technology Saves Precious Time

Healthcare systems embracing technology to advance healthcare interoperability are: 

• Improving Patient Experiences by Decreasing the Time from Referral to Treatment
• Providing Clinically Organized Medical Histories to Providers, Making their Time More Meaningful and Effective, Allowing Them to Quickly Assess a Patient and Determine the Right Care Plan
• Streamlining the Records Retrieval Process, Eliminating Headaches for Administrators, and Allowing Them to Spend More Time Directly Supporting Patients
• Improving the Bottom Line for Healthcare Systems, Reducing Patient Leakage

Healthcare interoperability matters. It’s our best opportunity to enhance patient outcomes and provider satisfaction. Using technology can significantly reduce the time it takes for patients to benefit from advanced treatment options and quickly embark on a path to recovery.

It’s well past time for hospitals and healthcare systems across the U.S. to leave faxing and CDs of data in the past and take advantage of innovative technologies that save time and can even save lives. 

About Dan Torrens

Dan Torrens is CEO of eHealth Technologies, a leading healthcare technology company that decreases time to treatment by quickly delivering requested and actionable medical histories to clinicians.