Data In Once

Posted on 28 March 2013 by ImproveCareNow

ImproveCareNow Network Director, Dr. Richard Colletti, announced that on Wednesday March 27, the first electronic data transfer was performed successfully. ImproveCareNow data from the Electronic Health Record (Epic) at Vermont Children’s Hospital was successfully transferred electronically to the ImproveCareNow registry (ICN2).

The data had been entered by the pediatric gastroenterologists and nurse practitioners as part of clinic visits using an IBD SmartForm specifically designed to have extractable data elements needed for ICN2. The data was then extracted and transferred to ICN2. Going forward, Vermont will continue to transfer data electronically. Read more about electronic data transfer and the ICN2 registry in an article by Keith Marsolo, PhD – Director of Software Development and Data Warehouse at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.

This is a major milestone in the Network’s plans to enable all ImproveCareNow centers to have electronic data transfer, eliminating the need for manual data entry of numerous data elements, reducing the time and cost of data entry, and improving the completeness and accuracy of the data.

All ImproveCareNow centers who use the Epic IBD SmartForm for data collection can now utilize the electronic data transfer process. The IBD SmartForm is accessible in all Epic systems. The Network is prepared to help all centers using Epic to access, configure and clinically use the IBD SmartForm as soon as possible.

ImproveCareNow is also working with other EHR companies—Cerner and Centricity now, and Allscripts soon—to develop similar forms that will collect extractable data necessary for electronic data transfer to ICN2. These 4 companies serve 80% of the centers in ImproveCareNow.

Thanks and congratulations to Keith Marsolo and the team at Biomedical Informatics at CCHMC for their unflagging commitment and success, and to all who have envisioned and worked to bring this to fruition.

We’ve taken our first step—we are ready and eager to work for and with our care centers as we dash into the future of model IBD care.

Incorporating Patient-generated Information to Manage Health

Posted on 23 August 2012 by ImproveCareNow

e-Patient Nikolai (Kolya) Kirienko’s White House testimony is a must read if you feel it’s essential to have a voice and visibility into your own healthcare.

Testimony of Nikolai Kirienko
Project Director, Crohnology.MD
University of California, Berkeley
www.crohnology.md

Incorporating Patient-generated Information to Manage Health
HIT Policy Committee Hearing
June 8, 2012

Health IT at the White House

Posted on 26 June 2012 by Peter Margolis

On June 19^th, I was honored to represent the ImproveCareNow network and other learning networks at a White House meeting on how Health Information Technology (health IT or HIT) can improve health outcomes.

Present were about 75 leaders from institutions and practices that have advanced the use of health IT to improve care and outcomes. In his opening remarks, Farzad Mostashari, MD, Director of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health (ONC) IT made a number of important points:

The number of offices using electronic medical records (EMRs) has doubled and about half (2,400) hospitals in the US now have EMRs
Increasing the use of health IT faces many challenges: workforce training, data sharing, privacy and security. The opportunity is to move beyond simply implementing new technology to using health IT to improve care and outcomes. ONC is particularly interested in how to turn data collection through electronic health records into a quality improvement program and so invited groups like ours.
What’s unique about HIT is how fast it can adapt and change in response to needs and feedback
And it’s important to harness the knowledge within the field. For me, this was the most important message of the day and one that’s right in line with what we’re doing in the ImproveCareNow Network and C3N Project. It’s our responsibility to share the knowledge of all – patients, clinicians, and researchers to make health care better. If patients and clinicians don’t speak up and share what they know, patients will suffer by not getting the best care

During the conference participants shared numerous examples of how HIT and the Affordable Care Act are working to make care better, more efficient and cheaper

HIT helps to engage patients in collaboration in addressing their problems. “You use it in collaboration with patients to guide their care.” Mike Zeroukian, MD
Charles Kennedy, MD Aetna. “We will increasingly see health insurers pay for health information exchange and better use of data.”

Participants also noted the many limitations of current technologies including:

Ways for patients to share information among providers
The need for greater public awareness about individual vendors’ willingness and action in making data sharing possible across systems
The need for public usability ratings for EMRs (like Consumer Reports) to spawn greater competition in meeting the needs of practicing clinicians
The need for EMR vendors need to learn about how to support QI

Overall, it was clear that administration officials were listening and that much excellent work is taking place in the field. It’s a pleasure to be able to represent the work of ImproveCareNow and the C3N Project, which is one of several data and knowledge sharing networks for kids with chronic illness. Networks such as ours will be the way of the HIT future.