A new data liquidity initiative between a Pennsylvania women’s hospital and a nearby obstetrics and gynecology practice have resulted in the interoperability between the groups’ different electronic health record systems, officials announced Tuesday. 

 

The Epic EHR at Lancaster General Health’s Women & Babies Hospital now interoperates with the Greenway EHR at ob/gyn practice May-Grant Associates, allowing both companies to exchange continuity of care documents and securely share patient data to better coordinate care in their community.

 

Greenway is a member of CommonWell alliance, the interoperability vendor group announced at HIMSS13 this past March, but Epic has not joined that partnership.

 

[See also: Six HIT heavy-hitters announce interoperability organization.]

 

Officials say the new data-sharing capability, which will be replicated in other settings, delivers significantly more effective care coordination for over 2,500 patients of Doctors May-Grant whose babies are delivered at Lancaster General Health each year.

 

“We wanted caregivers to have the most accurate, up-to-date information for every patient, whether they were in the office or the hospital,” said Mona S. Engle, RN, May-Grant practice administrator, in a July 8 press statement on behalf of Greenway Technologies. “We’re fortunate that our EHR providers, Greenway and Epic, see interoperability as an appropriate way to work together to ultimately enhance patient care.”

 

The architecture of May-Grant’s EHR simplifies the exchange of data with dissimilar EHR systems, with a bidirectional, hub-based exchange that supports all industry standards. The main development task in the project for May-Grant and LG Health was for Epic to create a connection to the Greenway EHR to enable data flow. With that connection now in place, both systems freely exchange patient information such as allergies, medications with dosages, problem lists and past health status.

 

“We’re moving from convenience now to really improving care for patients,” said Michael Ripchinski, MD, chief medical information officer, LG Health. 

 

Tee Green, president and chief executive officer of Greenway, also considers this a big win, but says there’s much left to accomplish in the realm of interoperability.

 

“Electronification of health data continues to evolve, and by no means are we close to being at the end game,” he said in a July 8 press release. “Moving to convenient and cost-effective cloud-based service delivery,” he adds, “is a major step toward population health and the care coordination that consumers and payers are increasingly demanding.”

 

[See also: Q&A: McKesson and Cerner execs discuss CommonWell Health Alliance.]

 

For providers at May-Grant Associates, this interoperability win means higher quality care for patients and greater efficiency. “It certainly makes you more efficient as a provider when you can click on one document to look at previous visits and history,” said May-Grant’s Terri L. Rapp, MD.