In The Know - MEDSEEK News and Expert Opinion on the eHealth Industry

What do Patients Want?

The Commonwealth Fund has released the results of its 2008 Survey of Public Views of the U.S. Health Care System, conducted by Harris Interactive. According to a telephone survey of 1,004 random U.S. adults, 80 percent of respondents believe that the healthcare system needs either fundamental change or complete rebuilding.

MEDSEEK Leads in KLAS® for Clinical Portal Software Solution - MEDSEEK Leads KLAS ® Portals Segment as of August 22, 2008

MEDSEEK recently received the news... we are leading in KLAS® rankings for our Clinical Portal software solution.

reThinking eHealth Webinar Announced: Give the Providers What They Want

Birmingham, Ala.– July 21, 2008 –MEDSEEK, the leading provider of enterprise portal connectivity solutions, announced today that Dr. Asim Masood of William Osler Health Centre and Dr. Jay Wallin of Mount Carmel Health System will present a Webinar in the monthly educational series reThinking eHealth. The session, titled “Give the Providers What They What: Two physicians share ways their facilities have improved provider satisfaction,” will take place on Wednesday August 27th at 2pm EDT, 11am PDT.

Question: In Hospital-Physician Relationship Programs, How Critical Is an eCommunication Strategy?

The following article was recently published in the eHealthcare Strategy & Trends March 2008 edition. It is the first part of a two part article.

Mel Flesland, a Senior eHealth Specialist for MEDSEEK, contributed to the publication of this article and discussed the importance having of a physician portal strategy. Mel will also provide her insight as part of a panel presentation at MEDSEEK's upcoming eHealth Client Congress in May. She teamed up with MedStar Health in Lutherville, Maryland and Microsoft Corporation to launch HealthVault in conjunction with MEDSEEK's patient portal. Mel will present alongside Cindy Tanenbaum with MedStar Health and Dr. James Mault with Microsoft on Wednesday, May 7th at 1:45pm CDT at The Peabody Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee.

Read entire article below...

Canadian clinical connectivity initiatives gain momentum

Several Canadian clinical connectivity initiatives are showing strength as adoption grows. AGFA Healthcare, along with MEDSEEK, continues its success in the Canadian market. 

Healthcare Information Management & Communication and Canadian Healthcare Technology published stories on the successes several hospitals are having in connecting physicians with clinical information to improve community-wide patient care.

Where are RHIOs and clinical connectivity initiatives heading?

While the news about the ongoing viability of RHIOs continues to be questioned, MEDSEEK is one of the few vendors creating a broad reaching connectivity platform to exchange clinical information between hospital and physician practice systems. While we're proud of our track record, it's gratifying  when other people recognize our contributions. Take a look at a recent post to the HISTalk blog by Art Vandelay (an obvious alias):

“Re: RHIO failures. I attended a set of meetings for our local health information exchanges (HIE). The first stumbling blocks were the politics and the leveling of the data competitive advantage a few organizations experienced. These issues weren’t resolved before the lack of a sustainable business model and funds for initial investment seem to have really impacted the project. We never really got around to the privacy concerns. Without a government mandate or a realignment of incentives, this just isn’t going to happen soon. I see this concept coming-back in about 5-10 years, once the vast majority of the country has baseline clinical data repositories installed and functioning and the standards committees have had time to meet and align. Very localized initiatives where hospitals exchange data with their affiliated physicians’ computerized medical records are likely to start springing-up in the place of HIEs. This scope can be managed. Vendors to watch include Novo Innovations, Medicity, MedSeek and dBMotion. The technologies and services of these vendors seem to set them apart from others in the pack.”

We have experienced what Art (Seinfeld fan perhaps) describes first hand. One such customer is working with us to develop connectivity with community physicians, as part of a broader patient portal and clinical portal initiative. Most recently we achieved a major milestone that moved beyond our eConnect application's ability to push/pull clinical data between the medial center's information system and physician EMRs from GE Healthcare and Cerner. With support from GE and Cerner (after customer encouragement), MEDSEEK delivered the ability to "post" the hospital encounter data directly into the physician's EMR. While this is not rocket science, it does illustrate the evolution of data connectivity between systems, from real-time access/viewing to sharing and transfer of ownership.

For more on our clinical connectivity projects (an example of a successful regional RHIO) read our case study on the Western North Carolina Health Network and its DataLink initiative. Their story was also picked up by Health Management Technology magazine.

Alegent Health delivers price transparency to its community

Seems as though Algent Health is on a roll. We just learned they were featured in December 2007 issue of Healthcare Informatics. The article is entitled Pulling Back the Curtains (great title by the way) and features several hospital systems delivering price transparency to their community.

In January 2007, a ground-breaking online application called My Cost, conceived by Alegent Health and MEDSEEK, went live. My Cost provides consumers with information on fees and estimated out-of-pocket costs for nearly 500 common treatments, based on the consumer's individual health plan or financial situation. Uninsured consumers have access to a list of self-pay prices for frequently purchased services as well as information on financial assistance programs for needed services that are cost-prohibitive.

In demonstrating its commitment to price transparency Alegent Health and MEDSEEK are conducting a two-day hands-on workshop on the topic called POWER TO THE PATIENT. This practical workshop is available to all hospital and we encourage you to sign-up, as space is limited.

In addition to the article in Healthcare Information, feel free to read Alegent's success story published within our web site.

Clinical Portal expands its REACH

More physicians gain access to the REACH (Rapid Electronic Access to Clinical Health information) Portal. Physicians at Credit Valley Hospital can now participant in the collaborative care initiative between six hospitals in Peel and Halton regions. Read the full story.

This is an exciting development for MEDSEEK as more physicians and hospitals share information with each other through the REACH clinical portal. While the physician portal has been live for some time, physician adoption continues.

"Integrating our system with William Osler Health Centre and Halton Healthcare Services will reduce the duplication of tests and by doing so, reduce healthcare costs." says Dan Germain, Credit Valley vice president and e-Health lead for the Mississauga Halton Local Health Integration Network. "What's most important is the benefit to patients, especially in emergency situations when access to comprehensive patient information is critical."

The REACH web portal provides access to over 90,000 inpatient stays and 1,050,000 outpatient visits for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2007. Patient stays and visits from all three hospitals are consolidated into one web portal view for use by authorized clinicians.

5 Rights of a Successful eHealth Execution Plan

Implementing an eHealth vision is a rewarding journey. Like most journeys, the first step of any eHealth initiative starts with a vision. The vision provides the goal of the journey and how it will impact the entire organization for years to come. Unfortunately, the vision does not provide the road map to make the journey possible.

Building RHIO's with the Federated Data Model

We have all heard the hype as every expert in the industry offers their opinion on building Regional Health Information Networks, but with over 100 projects in progress nationwide, which methodology is really working? Although some say the landscape still won't be ready for another 10 years, my involvement with connecting hospitals and hospital networks over the past decade has given me a much more positive perspective.