For PinnacleHealth, Technology Not the Primary Consideration for an HIE

For PinnacleHealth, Technology Not the Primary Consideration for an HIE

Many hospitals are now setting up Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) to take the fragmented elements of the healthcare process and service centers and link them together into a more cohesive system. Yet, some HIEs continue to struggle. The challenge to-date is that with many healthcare technology initiatives, it all boils down to what software and hardware will be selected and installed to solve the problem. However, with HIEs, an IT-driven solution is the problem.

Technology Follows Goal Setting

From the start of its plans to set up an HIE, PinnacleHealth, a non-profit healthcare system serving Central Pennsylvania with four campuses (Community, Cumberland, Harrisburg and Polyclinic) and FamilyCare physician practices, believed technology was the secondary point. "We focused on defining our goals and deciding what service offerings would lead to the best outcomes, then and only then, did we shop for technology," says Joel Arker, Program Manager at PinnacleHealth.

After evaluating a range of vendors, PinnacleHealth decided on MobileMD's Managed Services HIE. Going beyond traditional IT-focused offerings, MobileMD's HIE combines all technologies, storage, support and training under one umbrella, offering a full-featured HIE.

"Quite simply, we wanted an HIE solution, not a piece of software or hardware," stresses Steven Roth, CIO at PinnacleHealth. "We wanted to deliver services, not build something, and MobileMD was able to come in and help us deliver an end-to-end solution."

Physician Acceptance

PinnacleHealth set out short and longer term goals tied to very real results. At the start, they wanted the HIE to communicate results, referrals, orders and reservations within the healthcare community. So far, PinnacleHealth has rolled out E-results and E-records, which have been very popular with physician practices.

"We can now push results to our connected physician practices. And, ten practices have already asked us to turn off the faxing of results," says Arker.

Each physician office also has E-records — not only a record repository, but also the ability to access all records tied to their patients. Now, physicians can easily access the patient chart before an initial patient visit or before a consult and be prepared: did the patient visit the ER recently; are there any conditions that need to be discussed?

Measuring Success

Success can also be measured by the demand for connecting into PinnacleHealth's HIE. More than 250 physicians, in more than 40 practices, are now connected to the HIE, with practices being added at the pace of two or three a week. "We expect to have about 300 physicians connected by year's end," adds Arker.

Moving forward, PinnacleHealth aims to make it even easier for service providers to update the patient chart and coordinate care: Referrals, lab orders and secure messaging will become part of the information exchange.

Arker points out that "whether it's a consultant, cardiologist or primary care physician, they can put notes in the chart, access most types of test results and make referrals. We're making patient care cohesive and interactive."

Hospitals like PinnacleHealth are finding that a managed services HIE model allows them to leave the ‘heavy lifting' of technical and service support to the exchange provider, and focus on the business and strategic goals of offering a valuable set of services to their partners and widening the community network.

"Our goal," adds Roth, "was to focus PinnacleHealth's resources on our customers, including physician practice workflow, change management and user education, in order to maximize the value to the customer and allow MobileMD to focus and execute on the technology delivery. So far, it's been an outstanding partnership between Pinnacle, our customers and MobileMD, which we fully expect will expand moving forward."

Meet Steven Roth and Joel Arker

Steven Roth Vice President and CIO PinnacleHealth	Joel Arker Project Manager for HIE PinnacleHealth

Steven Roth is Vice President and Chief Information Officer at PinnacleHealth, where he is responsible for Informatics, Health Information Management, Telecommunications, Biomedical Engineering and Mail Services Departments. He is a former partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP where he was responsible for the firm's Healthcare Provider Technology Practice in the Northeast region.

Joel Arker is the Project Manager for Pinnacle's health information exchange. Before going into private practice, Arker was associated with Cerner Corp. where he led integrated clinical system deployments at both academic medical centers and community hospitals.