Medical record network to launch in Knox

Knoxville is site for cooperative model

By LARISA BRASS, Brass@knews.com
November 10, 2005

Knoxville has been selected as a demonstration site for a cooperative medical information network designed to serve as a model for the rest of the country.

The Patient Safety Institute, a Plano, Texas, nonprofit organization, has received $985,000 in grant funding from the Physicians' Foundation for Health Systems Excellence, a Boston-based nonprofit group, to design and launch a program allowing hospitals, physicians, labs, pharmacies and other health-care organizations access to patient records to improve patient care and save money.

The Patient Safety Institute, whose board includes members of physician, hospital and consumer groups, selected Knoxville for the program from a list of cities nationwide. The demonstration project will ultimately allow patients to carry the key to their medical history in their pockets and providers to access that information via the Internet. Other finalists for the program included Seattle, Denver and Chicago.

The Patient Safety Institute will work with the East Tennessee Health Information Network, a collaboration of Knoxville's four major hospital operators - Baptist Health System, Covenant Health, St. Mary's Health System and University Health System - to set up the network, which should be fully operational within three years.

The grant will pay for design and initial setup of the network, said Patient Safety Institute CEO Johnny Walker. The organization is pursuing $7 million to $10 million in additional funding to roll it out to patients and providers. A third phase of the project will be to expand the system to counties surrounding Knoxville that the member health-care providers serve.

Equal access The goal, said Walker, is for everyone involved in health care - from physicians to insurance companies - to be able to access medical records with patient permission and avoid redundant patient information forms and unnecessary tests, prescriptions and emergency room visits.

"Imagine that anywhere you went that you were treated for medical services, you could pull out a card and hand it to them," he said. "We can do that right now with our financial information. We can't do that in health care. There's no technological reason we shouldn't be able to do that."

The East Tennessee Healthcare Information Network has been working toward that end since it formed in 2003, said Alan Hill, CEO of information technology broker ClearPath Group, which co-manages the network with Dennis Corley, executive director of Digital Crossing Networks, a computer data center in downtown Knoxville.

Since early last year, the hospital network's four members have been connected via private network through Digital Crossing as part of a system to transmit digital images such as X-rays, MRI and CTI scans and other diagnostic tests from one hospital to another.

"We've kind of got a laundry list of what we want to do here," Hill said. "It boils down to time and money. We've kind of gotten it to a point here. We can't really do much of anything unless we've got the funding."

Hill and others contacted the Patient Safety Institute, and Walker said he was impressed with the local collaboration at several levels.

"We wanted to select a place in the country where there was collaboration among all the hospitals, physicians, insurers" and anyone else involved in supplying local health care, Walker said. "What we were looking for was total collaboration. In Knoxville, one of the selling points was you had every major hospital fully participating, not just speaking nice."

In addition, he said, the organization received letters of support from Tennessee politicians, including Gov. Phil Bredesen, U.S. Sen. Bill Frist; the Tennessee Medical Association; insurers Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Tennessee, TennCare and Cariten; and area physicians groups.

And, Walker said, Knoxville already has the beginnings of a network on which to build.

Paying for the service Aside from showing improved patient care, an important part of the demonstration is to create a system that can be self-sustaining and self-funding, he said.

"It's believed in the industry that there's more than sufficient savings that would pay for this, but it's never been demonstrated," Walker said.

Once that savings has been demonstrated, a system could be set up to pay for the network, likely on a transaction-fee basis similar to the method used by credit card companies and banks, he said.

Ultimately, Walker said, the plan is to create a nationwide system, powered by a third-party provider such as the Patient Safety Institute, that would function on its own without outside funds and be available for all patient transactions, from a doctor visit to insurance reimbursement.

"It would be ultimately a health-care network," Walker said. And with a third party controlling access to that information, the data would remain secure and patient-controlled, similar to individual financial information.

Local hospital executives expressed enthusiasm for the project.

"The infrastructure this grant can provide will clearly help in meeting our goal to ensure all health-care providers have the information they need while allowing us to meet our responsibilities to the residents to protect their personal and health information," said Chester Maze, senior vice president of Information Systems for Baptist Health System.

"The grant represents the first steps of an exciting journey," said Mike Ward, chief information officer for Covenant Health. "Knoxville-area hospitals are on the leading edge when it comes to collaboration. Our goal is to implement a technology framework that will evolve into a sustainable information management model that will have a significant impact on the Knoxville community."

The Project:
Creation of a health information system that allows electronic transmission of medical records and patient information, first in Knoxville and then in surrounding counties

Who's in charge:
The Patient Safety Institute, a Plano, Texas-based nonprofit company, which will work in collaboration with the East Tennessee Health Information Network, a consortium of Knoxville's four largest health-care systems: Baptist Health System, Covenant Health, St. Mary's Health System and University Health System

Project Rollout:

• Phase I: Design and launch of the system software with creation of a portal for physicians to access information on the network

• Funding: $985,000

• Completed: Mid-2006
  
  

• Phase II: Access to patient records by physicians in the network and issuance of cards to patients who participate, allowing transfer of their information from one provider to another. All participation would be voluntary. Also includes completion of a cost/savings analysis by a third-party organization

• Funding: $7 million-$10 million (source to be determined)

• Completed: Mid-2008
  
  

• Phase III: Expansion of network into surrounding areas

• Funding: self-funded

• Completed: Ongoing

• Source: Patient Safety Institute

Business writer Larisa Brass may be reached at 865-342-6318.

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