“There’s a common theme of taking care of business locally, within the organization, and worrying about reaching out later,” says Lorraine Fernandes, senior vice president and Healthcare Industry Ambassador, for Initiate Systems.

“But now the trend is to exchange data between hospitals, clinics and labs,” she says.

Recently Initiate Systems and Wellogic, another leading health information exchange provider, announced a combined solution that delivers accurate health information to clinicians and patients.

Initiate Patient enterprise master person index (EMPI) solution and Wellogic Health Information Exchange work together to accurately identify a patient across multiple systems and databases to create a meaningful, trusted system of record. This record is then delivered to Wellogic Consult, the provider portal and electronic health record (EHR) solution, and to Wellogic Rapport, the patient portal and personal health record (PHR) solution.

For example, CareSpark, a non-profit regional health information organization (RHIO) serving northeast Tennessee and southwest Virginia, uses the Wellogic Consult provider portal solution with Initiate Patient to give its community of providers access to a consolidated view of patient data across participating organizations and to enable community-wide workflows and messaging.

“These solutions are essential for timely sharing of accurate patient data,” said Liesa Jenkins, CareSpark’s executive director. “By providing access to trusted information, these solutions enable us to reduce medical errors and improve health outcomes of patients who are served by multiple healthcare organizations in the CareSpark RHIO.”

“Initiate Patient and Initiate’s master data management capabilities are the critical foundation for accurate matching and linking of patient information across widely dispersed systems,” said Sumit Nagpal, CEO of Wellogic. “Combined with Wellogic’s health information exchange innovations, this solution stands out in its ability to offer a level of semantic interoperability, precision and ease of use that is unrivaled.”

“The Wellogic exchange is one of the most flexible on the market, allowing us to deliver a combined solution that meets the evolving needs of customers deploying a federated, centralized or hybrid HIE model,” said Michael Warthen, director, Healthcare Exchange Solutions, Initiate Systems. “Healthcare organizations can now more quickly and securely access a wealth of critical, relevant medical information, reducing the chance for medical error or redundancy.”

But Initiate Systems is not limiting its abilities and influence to the clinic and hospital scene. Pharmacies and insurers are following the trend as well and using Initiate to power the movement of shared data.

“We use it to match 200 million insured patients with prescriptions across the country,” says JP Little, COO and acting CEO of RXHub, a national patient health information network. Prescription eligibility, benefit, formulary and medication history information is provided - for consenting patients - to authorized physicians at the point of care. This real-time decision support information is used by physicians to prescribe the most clinically appropriate and cost effective medication for patients and enables Informed Prescriptions to be sent electronically to the patient’s choice of pharmacies.

Little says the results of using RXHub include improved patient safety through real-time informed prescriptions; streamlined processes enabling clinical workflow efficiencies; and overall cost savings for the delivery of healthcare services in the United States.

In essence, the healthcare industry is undergoing a radical change, not only in delivery but in a new focus on broader performance.

“More healthcare organizations are thinking like a business, building loyalty in patients, enforcing more quality control, and tracking data to protect against errors and more rapidly explore new opportunities,” says Fernandes.