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Memphis-based MidSouth eHealth Alliance signed a multi-year contract with Informatics Corporation of America to provide its commercial CareAlign™ solution

Informatics Corporation of America (ICA; www.icainformatics.com) announced that the Memphis-based MidSouth eHealth Alliance (MSeHA) has signed a multi-year contract with ICA to provide its commercial CareAlign™ solution for continued HIE capabilities. In 2004, MSeHA was initially awarded an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) grant in collaboration with the Vanderbilt Medical Center’s Regional Informatics team to develop data sharing capability within the Memphis community, with the primary goal of assisting with the management of the “safety net” population served by the 16 hospitals, their emergency departments, and primary care practices within the community.

“As the grant-funded demonstration period comes to a close, MSeHA looked to ICA for migration from the demonstration software platform to their commercially available CareAlign™ product,” says Burt Waller, Chairman of the MSeHA Board and CEO of Christ Community Health Services. “With the signing of this contract, MSeHA begins a new era of ownership, accountability and sustainability. This is a significant step for the MSeHA as it moves from the five years of success supported by the Memphis-based healthcare participants and Vanderbilt’s Regional Informatics team to a self- sustaining HIE with expanded capabilities to meet the new ARRA HITECH requirements and evolving healthcare reform legislation. This transition shows that demonstration dollars can successfully sow seeds of ongoing achievements at a local, state and regional level.”

To date, MSeHA has logged over seven million encounters (130,000/month) for over 2.8 million total patients – one of many milestones, which also include:

An aggregated longitudinal medical record available at all 14 emergency departments and all participating primary-care locations.
The aggregated database now contains over 5 years of data.
Data is now readily available for use by approved MSeHA members when treating/caring for patients.
The MSeHA database contains nearly 42 million chart documents including such medical information as acute care discharge, emergency department and outpatient encounter summaries; radiology reports and laboratory results.
The Memphis health care facilities include 16 hospitals with 14 emergency rooms and 16 primary care sites, with clinical information residing in a diverse set of health care information systems, including: AllScripts, HeartLab, NextGen, Cerner IDX, RxClaim, HBOC McKesson, HealthPRO and Meditech MAGIC.

“ICA looks forward to working with MSeHA in the transition from a demonstration project to a commercial HIE model,” states Gary Zegiestowsky, chief executive officer of the ICA. “We recognize the hard work, expertise and collaboration that occurred during the formation, solution development, deployment and support of the demonstration over the past five years between the MSeHA participants and the Regional Informatics team, and look forward to a smooth transition to the CareAlign™ solution to meet MSeHA’s ongoing needs.”

Waller concludes, “The Vanderbilt Regional Informatics team and ICA have served MSeHA well and is an example of how health care information can be managed to control costs and help improve patient care by using aggregated data to identify specific medical conditions, determine corresponding treatment patterns, and provide the groundwork for quality health care reporting. We look forward to our expanded relationship and the use and benefits of the full featured CareAlign™ solution."

Source: Informatics Corporation of America