Three healthcare organizations in Virginia have demonstrated how small practices can share patient data through simple Internet connections and then hand the data to more technology sophisticated groups for expanded exchange.
The pilot was one of the first to integrate two methods for health information exchange sponsored by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, according to an announcement.
One of those methods, the Direct Project, enables providers to perform simple “push” exchanges with other providers or labs, while the NwHIN Exchange allows for complex sharing among primarily large healthcare organizations.
In the pilot, Dominion Medical Associates, a small, independent physician practice in Richmond, Va., scanned paper patient records of diabetes patients and sent them via the Internet to CenVaNet, a large healthcare provider network in central Virginia, using its physician portal.
The portal, supplied by health IT service provider Medfx, digitized the information and used the Direct protocols to transport the patient summary data to MedVirginia, a Richmond-based health information exchange, which tagged and stored the data, according to the announcement April 5..
Verizon provided certificate authority, which are digital identifiers that verify the identity of senders and recipients.
As a result, the participating healthcare organizations are able to share, store and retrieve encrypted patient data and better coordinate their care, said Shannon Lodge, director of program development at CenVaNet.
“It is also providing tangible insights into the value of sharing health information digitally and is helping pave the way for Dominion Medical Associates’ migration to electronic health records,” she said.
The pilot demonstrates that “the federal guidelines for health IT adoption and secure electronic data exchange actually work,” said Dr. Peter Tippett, Verizon vice president for security and industry solutions.
ONC established the Direct Project to extend health information exchange to physicians and small practices that may have limited resources and technology assets to meet the requirements for meaningful use of electronic health records (EHRs). Direct went live in February at two sites and has been expanding since then.
Direct relies on a version of secure email that incorporates a streamlined set of standards and services of the nationwide health information network, while Exchange is a more comprehensive set of those protocols to securely share patient information through the Internet.
MedVirginia was the first healthcare organization in February 2009 to start using the NwHIN Exchange to share patient data with the Social Security Administration to speed up its disability determination process. It uses the Connect open source gateway, a representation of the standards and services of the nationwide health information network.
In closing the exchange loop, Dominion Medical can still print out and store the electronic records in their current paper-based system, but it will be easier to move to an electronic health records when it decides to do so.
