Health Reform Improved Information Sharing Home Care Path

Health care reform challenges health delivery systems to improve information sharing. Accountable Care Organizations (ACO) will be required to work together sharing information as a way to demonstrate improved quality and efficiency.

Accountable Care Organizations will interconnect network health care providers throughout the defined service area. The service area will be larger, regions. An integrated information system will provide each of the participating health network providers a means to accurately identify patients and quickly aggregate, consolidate key electronic portions of their medical records. Less time, less labor, more money available to serve patients.

An emergency room nurse could retrieve a presenting patients medical records (emergency department, clinical notes, discharge summaries, lab-pathology-radiology results, prescription, referral data, and more) immediately. The information on the nurses computer screen would be an accumulation of all past visits recorded by participating network providers. This reduces duplication. Patient satisfaction is improved as they are not sent home to try an earlier prescribed treatment that did not help.

This is a network of health care providers capable of sharing patient specific information. Critical data can be drawn from all providers serving the region in which the patient resides. Safer prescribing. Patients will begin to expect the benefits of expansion in data sharing. The focus is on improving the quality of health care across the region through enabling technology that links care givers through a common system , with key patient data. Better for patients and health care system delivery costs are reduced.