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How do health exchanges maximize our time in the doctor’s office?

Missed diagnoses are common at the doc’s office.  Many diseases have common symptoms … to add to that, physician communication with patients during an office visit is decreasing to an average visit of 7 minutes.  How can data fill this gap?  One very important aspect is accurate patient history.  How many times have you flown through the endless list of forms and forgotten to check the box that said that your grandfather suffered from a chronic medical condition?  How many times have you relayed your medical history through “rose colored glasses”?

Oracle’s Health Information Exchange is a platform that can be leveraged by providers to turn data into “actionable information” that enables collaborative care initiatives.  Drivers for HIE include:

  • Provide clinician access to comprehensive health information.  Greater access to patient health information provides clinicians a holistic view of their patients and enables clinicians to make more informed clinical decisions at the point of care.
  • Improve patient care and safety. Clinical gaps in care alerts against evidence-based guidelines and protocols help clinicians better manage patients with chronic conditions and provide preventive healthcare services to all patients. Access to health information recorded by other clinicians, such as allergies and medication history, helps reduce potential adverse drug events.
  • Enhance care team collaboration. The secure exchange of health information among care team members improves care team collaboration and leads to more coordinated transitions in care.
  • Reduce healthcare costs. Improved patient safety; reduction of redundant, clinically unnecessary treatments; lower rates of readmissions; and improved patient outcomes will ultimately lead to lower healthcare costs.
  • Lay the groundwork for value-based healthcare. Once health information is available electronically, it can be aggregated and normalized to become semantically interoperable and analyzed. Robust business intelligence and analytic tools to measure quality and outcomes against industry benchmarks will provide the foundation for population health, care, and disease management initiatives and identify clinical best practices across the entire delivery network. By combining clinical and financial health information, Health Information Organizations can measure and monitor clinical, operational, and financial performance of its accountable care or value-based healthcare initiatives.

HIE technology is not a single application but instead a set of technologies consisting of a presentation layer, patient/provider identification, data aggregation, data integration and exchange, information management, identity access management, and development framework and extensions.  Oracle entered the HIE space in 2003 with the introduction of Oracle Healthcare Transaction Base (HTB), a clinical data repository and service infrastructure that enables healthcare organizations to connect disparate systems and aggregate patient records.  The HTB remains at the core of Oracle’s Health Information Exchange as the patient-centric clinical repository. Other Oracle solutions, such as Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle SOA Suite, and Oracle Identity Management, provide integration and security. Oracle also has the Oracle Healthcare Master Person Index, the Oracle Health Sciences Information Gateway and Oracle Health Sciences Information Manager as the foundation for the NwHIN and support for integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) exchange standards.  The Oracle Health Information Exchange supports centralized, federated, or hybrid models and can be implemented on-premise, hosted or provided on a SaaS basis by partners. The typical implementation time frame is approximately 6 months. However, implementations have ranged from 3 months to one and half years depending upon the scope of the requirements and number of sites to be connected. Oracle’s Health Information Exchange solution includes a software development kit that enables customers and partners to develop custom features as well as integrate with the Oracle Health Information Exchange solution and other Oracle solutions including Oracle Enterprise Healthcare Analytics, Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle WebCenter Portal, business intelligence, and reporting.

Key differentiators for the Oracle solution include:

  • Oracle can provide a comprehensive HIE technology stack from hardware and storage infrastructure to databases and middleware to applications.
  • Customers appreciate that Oracle provides a transparent (i.e., not a “black box”) development environment and the tools to allow them self-develop additional functionality.
  • Organizations seeking a strong data model, analytics, and predictive analytics capabilities should consider Oracle Health Information Exchange solution.

Perficient is an Oracle Platinum partners with Oracle as a system integrator to deliver these solutions for Private HIEs.  Perficient is also uniquely positioned to deliver HIE assessments and strategic roadmaps.  Come visit our booth #1555 and #1851 at HIMSS 2013!

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Terie McClintock

Terie McClintock is the Oracle Healthcare Practice Director at Perficient, Inc. where she is responsible for providing healthcare subject matter expertise to the Perficient Oracle National Business Unit while also cultivating and managing the partnership with Oracle’s Healthcare Vertical and Horizontal Business Units. Terie has more than 25 years of IT experience. Prior to joining Perficient, Terie contributed over 13 years at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center with the most recent title of Director, Data Management Services. Prior to M.D. Anderson, Terie worked for IBM as a Senior Consultant.

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