Hospital Controller Yvonne Gennrich updated the Cook County North Shore Hospital Board at its February 18 meeting on the progress of the Health Information Exchange Program, a database being created with federal stimulus dollars to facilitate the transfer of patient records.
The program would allow a medical provider to access patient records held by other providers, enabling a physician, for example, to access diagnosis and medication records of patients coming into the emergency room if they had authorized the release of such information in other places where they had received care.
The system is new and is being developed in various regions of Minnesota. The initial database would have only information on where someone had received care but is intended to eventually include actual health records.
Getting on board may require the hospital to purchase software that would allow it to interface with the rest of the system. Thehospital could enter the program now at no charge, but facilities of this size will be required to pay $6,000 a year after August 1.
St. Luke’s Hospital CEO John Strange, at the hospital board meeting after the two hospitals entered an agreement for St. Luke’s to provide administrative services to North Shore Hospital, said three million records are in the Health Information Exchange Program database already, with the northern part of the state “way ahead” of other Minnesota regions and most of the country.
So far, 1.2% of patients have opted out of having their health information entered into the database. “We think it’s ultimately better for the patients in this region to have this kind of access,” Strange said.
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