Enter Your Email Address to Receive a
Copy of MedicExhange Member Demograhpics

Sharp Community Medical Group (SCMG) announced it will employ a new Collaborative Care Solution unveiled by IBM and ActiveHealth Management to connect the medical group's 200 primary care physicians and 500 specialists throughout San Diego County in order to help doctors to deliver more complete and accurate decisions about patient care.

SCMG expects the new solution to change the way physicians and nurses access information throughout the hospital group's multiple electronic medical record ( EMR ) systems by applying analytics and clinical decision support to help give doctors better insight and work more closely across patient care teams.

"The relationship among Sharp Community Medical Group, IBM and ActiveHealth is really about transforming how we deliver patient care," said John Jenrette, M.D., CEO for Sharp Community Medical Group. "The current state of medicine is one of paper records, fragmentation and not having the information doctors need at the right time and the patient isn't truly a part of their own healthcare. The work we are undertaking will create a better system that becomes patient-centric with better overall outcomes."

The Collaborative Care Solution analyzes multiple patient data sources to give doctors actionable decision support on their desktop. It also helps doctors see trends in SCMG patient populations, for example by showing among 2,000 patients how many have uncontrolled diabetes, or how many women haven't had their mammography screening .

SCMG is also working closely with IBM and ActiveHealth to redesign the way SCMG doctors deliver care to support accountable care and patient-centered medical home models, which position physicians to be reimbursed based on the quality of care, not only the number of procedures performed.

For teams of caregivers working with patients, the Collaborative Care Solution ensures primary care doctors, specialists, nurses, pharmacists and case managers have access to the same information, are able to communicate more frequently, and work together to make sure patients are followed up post-discharge and to bring patients into the loop by giving them more information about their medications and conditions. In the near future, it will allow SCMG patients to go online to schedule their appointments, get their medications refilled and even see their own medical records.

The Collaborative Care Solution from IBM and ActiveHealth employs analytics software to provide a new approach to patient care in which physicians can access and automatically analyze a patient's condition. Combining information from electronic medical records, claims, medication and lab data with ActiveHealth's evidence-based clinical decision support CareEngine and delivering it through an IBM cloud computing platform allows doctors to deliver more complete and accurate decisions about patient care.

Source: Trading Markets