The Journal of mHealth Vol 3 Issue 1 (Feb/Mar 2016) | Page 28

The Changing Landscape in mHealth and eHealth
Continued from page 24

UPMC or Fraser Health. About one in
five Americans live in a rural community,
and often their only healthcare options
are Critical Access Hospitals.2 Interoperability can help these organisations
overcome challenges common in rural
healthcare delivery, such as distance, isolation and limited resources.
North Country Hospital (Newport, Vermont, USA) is a Critical Access Hospital
tucked into the far northeastern corner
of Vermont, serving 22 communities
across two counties.
Director of Clinical Informatics Kate
Pierce explained that North Country’s IT
Steering Committee wanted to improve
physician access to all information about
the patient, not just the information
within the hospital’s system. But the
hospital, clinics and emergency room all
used different software vendors. Initially,
the organisation planned to move to a
single platform to achieve this goal.
“When you go to a single vendor system,
you end up giving up functionality for
integration,” Pierce said. “So we needed
to come up with a way to get some integration… communication and ability to
exchange data between systems without
having to rip old systems out.”
Instead of moving to a single platform
across the continuum of care, the North
Country IT Steering Committee changed
its approach to find a platform that

could work with different vendor solutions. Clinical Applications Analyst Carol
Casey, who has been involved with the
implementation and testing of the EHRagnostic solution, is looking forward to
launching the solution with clinicians.

benefits-critical-access-hospitals-and-othersmall-rural-hospitals

“Right now, our clinicians and nurses
have to look into three or four places to
get clinical data,” Casey said. “We have
end users doing testing now, mostly on
the physician side, and they’re seeing
great benefits.”
Lessons learned from UPMC, Fraser
Health and North Country
Achieving the promise of interoperability
will take time. We’re encouraged by the
early signs of success – such as coordinated care for mothers and newborns at
UPMC, well-informed medication delivery at Fraser Health, and comprehensive
data at the fingertips of clinicians working in a Critical Access Hospital. Patients
will reap the rewards of true interoperability, receiving better care at a lower cost.
References
1. 1 Health IT, 2014. Improved Diagnostics & Patient Outcomes.
[Internet]
https://www.healthit.gov/
providers-professionals/improved-diagnostics-patient-outcomes
2. 2 Health IT, 2015. Benefits for Critical Access Hospitals and Other Small
Rural Hospitals. [Internet] https://
www.healthit.gov/providers-professionals/

About the Author
Martha Thorne oversees the Population
Health business unit, which provides a
comprehensive portfolio of solutions
to help clients coordinate care, engage
patients, manage chronic diseases, and
achieve operational excellence. Her
vision for Allscripts CareInMotion TM,
the end-to-end suite of care coordination solutions, aligns with the healthcare
industry’s evolution from fee-for-service
to fee-for-value.
Prior to joining Allscripts, Martha worked
with leaders in the pharmaceutical and
home health industries in business development roles, bringing clinical expertise
and strategic planning t