Orion Health HIE Solution Provides Access to Healthcare Providers Across the Gulf South

Ochsner Health System, a non-profit, academic and multi-specialty healthcare delivery system in Louisiana is connecting thousands of physicians in the broader community to patient medical records. Based on secure web-based health information exchange ( HIE ) technology from Orion Health, Ochsner can now provide community and referring physicians across the region with access to information about patient care conducted within Ochsner Health System.  Healthcare providers can receive customized alerts of patient status and results and access a more complete patient record to improve clinical decision-making and ease care transitions regardless of where a patient received care within the health system.

Over the past several years Ochsner Health System has expanded, acquiring several area community hospitals. Data from all the care settings needed to be accessible to the entire community while maintaining patient privacy and creating a streamlined process for notifying physicians of patient experiences.

Chris Belmont, System Vice President and CIO of Ochsner Health System, says managing individual physician alert preferences was difficult. Contact information was constantly changing and there wasn’t a standard way to alert and communicate with physicians when their patients received care at an Ochsner facility.  

“In order to ensure the HIE system is valuable, it is important to provide physicians with a choice about what data they would like to be notified of and how that notification will be received. The Orion Health HIE technology lets physician’s manage their alert preferences to suit their needs and gain access to medical records in a customized view,” continues Mr. Belmont.

Orion Health ’s HIE Solution includes the capability to let physicians choose to receive electronic notification of updates relating to any of their patients. When new information becomes available, for example when lab results arrive, the Orion Health Concerto Physician Portal will electronically notify every physician who has subscribed for updates on that patient.

Orion Health President of North America, Paul Viskovich, says the challenge of integrating patient data across an enterprise is often similar to those of a regional health information exchange.

”Disparate systems and unique workflow exists within the departments of a hospital as it does across individual providers practices. Ochsner’s challenge was to find a system that was flexible enough to be customized to suit the workflow needs of new diverse groups yet still allowed them to retain control of their data and maintain compliance with privacy standards,” Mr. Viskovich concluded

Orion Health solutions use standards-based technology to integrate data within a facility and external partners without incurring costly system replacement approaches. Currently the company helps facilities and healthcare communities that connect 35 million patients with hundreds of thousands of active users.

Source: Orion Health