Home Forums Discussions Problems Geekspeak translation needed

I contacted my regional electronic healthcare network to see what sort of service they could provide. I got this:


Key Software Capabilities
Enterprise Master Patient Index (EMPI)
The Orion Health EMPI solution embeds Initiate Systems Catalyst EMPI application. It delivers a single, trusted and complete version of records in real-time and enables users to obtain a complete and accurate view of all data associated with persons, objects, locations and events.
The Orion Health EMPI is an innovative
Technology that provides best-of-breed patient
reconciliation and search capabilities to overcome
consistency, reliability and quality issues Typically found in health care communities. The Orion Health EMPI leverages Initiate's leading Master Data Management platform to provide it for purpose patient registry capabilities and leverages the !earnings from over 200 customer implementations to optimize the matching and inking algorithms used for patient identification.
Health Information Exchange
Orion Health has extensive expertise in the management and deployment of electronic healthcare systems to offer a complete, pre-integrated solution for a
single, region-wide Health Information Exchange. The solution being proposed here has been implemented previously, and is ready to be implemented without extensive on-site integration; saving time, money and resources.
Our solution has been architected to support all prevailing clinical data standards, regulations and modes of working. The systems proposed are deployed in sizable clinical environments, including a number of regional initiatives that utilize the combined solution, demonstrating the technical and clinical scalability
The solution pulls data from existing systems and provides a unified view of region-wide health data in a single location. By using standards-based
- zeroperability, the proposed solution means that no changes are required to these existing systems, allowing us to deploy a state-wide solution with minimal disruption to the existing systems and existing clinical process

ConcertoTM Clinical Portal is a browser-based, single sign-on web portal that provides secure access to multiple hospital and community-based information
systems, connecting them to provide a "single patient view" of data across all medical applications. ConcertoTM Clinical Portal uses powerful web software to
collate and display medical data from contemporary, legacy and "best of breed" systems.
Presented in an easy-to-use, intuitive graphical user interface, ConcertoTM Clinical Portal is designed to be easy for staff to learn and use. It features a clear and
simple graphical environment with a "patient-centric" view of data. For example. once a patient has been selected. the user can access any of that patient's
information in just one click.
Examples include:
? Patient demographic information from ADT/HIS systems
? Radiology images and reports, including PACS images
? Laboratory reports
? Outpatient (Ambulatory) and Inpatient (Acute) systems
? Medical document repositories
? Electronic clinical ordering/CPOE
? Hospital/health authority intranets
? Clinician email and calendar
? Transcribed reports and clinical notes
? Clinical guidelines
? Scanned documents
? Mental health
? Scheduling
? Clinical Decision Support


It goes on like that for several pages.

Is there some meaning imbedded in there someplace?

Sounds a little like, "I'm here from the government and I am going to help you!"

Is Orion Health your state Health Information Exchange? Sounds more extensive than ours in Washington State.

Orion was chosen to be the health information exchange (HIE) by the Alaska eHealth Network, which seems to be the covering entity for all issues medically electronic for us. The various organizational names and abbreviations get pretty turgid, as you know, and I am not positive who has authority over what.

And, I'm really serious in my question. Maybe there is something really important embedded in there, but I can't tell, and the folks at Alaska EHN did not clarify it well. They seem to be of the opinion that "We have this really great vendor, and it is going to do wonderful things." Can any of the cogniscentii here shed light on this?

HIEs are the hubs for exchange of electronic information. It's great that they have a EMPI, so that users are not alone in trying to match patients. I am not sure what your needs are in information exchange. I hear that AC development is going to try to connect to all 50 HIEs. If hospitals and other institutions will do the same, then all can exchange data without worrying about point to point interfaces. For example, if our hospital subscribes to HIE, I can then import labs directly into AC. The web portal is one way to see patient information from your data 'trading partners', but AC can develop an interface to your HIE so that all that patient matching and data exchange will be transparent to you.

David,
I certainly am not among the cogniscenti, so I would imagine that I am telling you what you already know. The verbiage suggests that Orion will provide the panacea we seek for record management ("a single, trusted and complete version of records in real-time"; a "'single patient view'" of data across all medical applications"). At the same time, the language is so hyperbolic ("all data associated with persons, objects, locations and events"), obscure, and fanciful (are "architected" and "zeroperability" even words?) that it makes you wonder if the entire product is a joke or fantasy.

I would just hope (or maybe, demand) that there is a human being who can speak with you and explain what this thing really does....

David,

The EMPI sounds like the technology they use to address is Peter Parker also Pete Parker. That kind of work takes lots of iterations and is expensive to craft, so if you get that in the mix, that is potentially a good thing.

Taking a quick look at their website, http://www.orionhealth.com/products/ it appears that they have a whole infrastructure for mapping and connecting different systems. They mention HL7 as well as CCD support, so my guess is that they can do XML parsing, which would be good for an AC integration.

The real question is what you want/need from the HIE - if I know that I can even reach out to these folks to translate.

Indy, I could answer that what I want is a fully integrated information management system that functions in a proactive paradigm to allow me to realize the full potential of my electronic environment in a meaningful manner; at least, that seems to be the language in use. But, being a simple country internist, what I will settle for is getting records quickly, easily, and seamlessly from my consultants, labs and hospital.

I found a human being to talk to at the eHealth network who was both intelligent and pleasant. It is all still pretty turbid, but I have hopes we are headed the right direction. One of the first things will be "push" notification from the hospital, ER, and x-ray that an interaction has taken place. This will help a lot. In the "olden days", the hospital foolishly thought that if we ordered an x-ray or a patient of ours was cared for by them, that they needed to send us some report about it, and just sent it. Then they went electronic, and told us "well, now you can just log on and get the results yourself." Which is true if 1) we are not averse to two layers of logon/passwords that expire every 15 minutes and a hideous interface; and 2) magically know that such an interaction has taken place. So, we may, at least on his part, be struggling back to where we were 10 years ago. Ah, progress.

In the "olden days", I could call any hospital in the country (handy for my snowbird patients) and talk to someone in medical records who would quickly fax a few pages of relevant information.

Nowdays, after much struggle we get 30 pages of boilerplate gobbledeygook out of their EMR. Sometimes it is possible to extract some clinical information from that watery gruel.

I imagine that something like this went on in the Middle East when they were transitioning from cuneiform to hieroglyphics.

Sorry for the ignorance but why did you contact these guys? And what question were you asking that you got this answer?

On another note the long winded answer seems like the answer to how we get to get paid by medicare for EHR meaning ful use

Ketan,

I keep getting notices from the the Alaska eHealth Network, urging me to join. They have grant money available to help small practices get started on the EHR, and, also apparently, to assist with ongoing tech support. They were the group that my partner was involved with a couple of years back that interviewed various EHR providers, and made recommendations for purchase and got some group deals going. (AC did not make the cut because it was not certified at the time, and that was a requirement.) Here I get lost in the jungle of abbreviations and terms, but they also serve as our state electronic health network for data exchange.
We did not join initially, as they seemed poorly organized, and our experience has been that accepting funds from any agency is a Faustian endeavor which we eventually regret. However, the data exchange does seem important, which led me to contact them and thus Orion with whom they contract. The information above was part of the package they sent when I asked what they had to offer.
As I said, I am struggling with this. It is a jumble of organizations, abbreviations, contracts and subcontracts, and I am just interested in one part.