Sunday, October 17, 2010

HIE Goes Live

The Maryland “Chesapeake Regional Information System for our Patients” (CRISP) has gone live with a statewide HIE. The infrastructure supports the private and secure flow of health information among physician practices, hospitals, labs, radiology centers, and other healthcare institutions.

Organizations participating in the HIE include Holy Cross Hospital, Suburban Hospital, Montgomery General Hospital, Community Radiology (a RadNet partner), American Radiology Services, Quest Diagnostics, and Laboratory Corporation of America.

“We at Holy Cross Hospital believe a statewide health information exchange can help make care safer and more efficient for Marylanders,” said Kevin J. Sexton, President and CEO of Holy Cross Hospital. “We are delighted to join CRISP, state government, and other healthcare providers in getting Maryland to this important milestone.”

Additionally, all 48 Maryland hospitals have recently committed to sharing data with the statewide HIE. This commitment covers 11,175 in-patient beds from Garret County to the Eastern Shore.

Other hospitals, physician practices, and clinics will be coming online before the end of the year, including many of the state’s federally qualified health clinics, which predominantly serve Medicaid, uninsured, and other underserved patients.

CRISP will also be expanding the data that the HIE is able to exchange as participation grows, to include hospital discharge summaries, lab and radiology results, to medical documents with more complete medical information, sometimes referred to as continuity of care documents or “CCDs”.

As David Horrocks, President of CRISP said, “The HIE is the beginning of a process which will give physicians new and more effective tools to provide the best care to their patients.”