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HealthBridge A Model RHIO in Our Own Backyard Last quarter’s newsletter raised a question of how the currently proposed RHIO concept differs from the CHIN concept first introduced over a decade ago. It raised questions on what it would take to be successful so that the RHIOs of the today and tomorrow don’t suffer the fate of some of the failed CHINs in the past. One such success story happens to be in our own backyard and has received national recognition and acclaim for their achievements towards building a community based health network through partnership, compromise and, above all else, putting the patient first by exercising what a RHIO can truly offer to benefit a community. HealthBridge is a collaborative healthcare network that has been serving the Greater Cincinnati Healthcare Community in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana since 1997. According to Keith Hepp, Vice President of Business Development, HealthBridge currently serves over 2,900 physicians by providing over a million results per month from over 30 different clinical applications originating at 17 of the 18 hospitals in the region, including national laboratories, transcription services and radiology centers. Further, HealthBridge sends information directly to the clinicians, with 91% sent electronically, 5% sent by fax and only 4% printed. “We have over 40,000 log-ins per month from clinical professionals who use HealthBridge as a critical tool to access PACS, Hospital Information Systems, Laboratory Information System, Fetal Heart Monitoring, and chart completion, just to name a few,” says Mr. Hepp. “HealthBridge has been recognized as an unqualified success and a model RHIO for the nation by every major IT publication in the industry.” What HealthBridge learned early on is that the hurdles to data sharing are more cultural than technological. HealthBridge breached the cultural barrier by facilitating a grass-roots initiative owned and operated by the Cincinnati healthcare community. This proves that in order for a RHIO to truly be successfully, the organizations with a vested interest must set aside their competitive differences with each other and focus on what the core mission of a Public Administration organization is; to serve the people. This truism is reflected and enumerated in the mission of HealthBridge found on their website: To improve the Quality and Efficiency of Our Community's Health Care Through a Shared Networking Infrastructure through the following guiding principles: • Serve the Community as a whole • Maintain patient privacy and • confidentiality • Provide hospitals, insurance companies and physicians a safe, secure means for moving to electronic commerce • Minimize the community's financial risk As an experienced organization with a mature infrastructure, HealthBridge recognizes that the success of their organization is the product of a healthy marriage between the altruistic intent and the strategic deployment of state-of-the-art technology. Users can access HealthBridge through a Secure Private Network a standard Internet connection, direct network connection to HealthBridge using RoadRunner or Zoomtown or even using a modem. Once connected, users can easily navigate through the HealthBridge site to gain access to any of the hosted content (ex. The Health Alliance’s Lastword system) or access a Clinical Messaging inbox customized for an individual physician practice to receive only their clinical results. And HealthBridge isn’t finished yet. They have a number of initiatives on the horizon. Some of these ambitious projects include: • Community-wide ambulatory order entry • Clinical data feeds to Physician office EMRs • Enabling physician-to-physician electronic communication through a clinical messaging platform HealthBridge’s success has even been recently featured as the cover story in July 2005 issue Health Leaders magazine (www.healthleaders.com), which provides a much closer look at the inner working behind the success. If you would like to find out more about what HealthBridge is doing and/or learn how HealthBridge can further benefit your physician practice, please feel free to visit their website at www.healthbridge.org. From the President's Desk Dear Members, My name is Bill Mitchin and I am the recently elected president of the Central and Southern Ohio chapter of HIMSS. I wanted to first of all say thank you to all the members who participated in our events this past year. Based on your feedback, our chapter is moving in the right direction to make your membership more meaningful than ever. The Board of Directors held its annual retreat recently to plan this coming year, a year we all agreed should be a year of inclusion. But before I share our plans let me first say thank you to Past President Darby Dennis for her leadership and hard work to position our chapter for a great future. I would also like to welcome our three new board members Marc Beasley, Steve Wood, and Russ Hessler. They all bring a wealth of experience and enthusiasm to the board and I’m excited to have them with us. Please take a moment to visit our web site at www.csohimss.org to learn more about our new members. Now let’s move on to our agenda. As I mentioned, the board is determined to reach out to you our members and create a chapter of inclusion. In the course of our discussions we came to realize just how diverse our chapter has become. We are a chapter of CIO’s, directors, managers, analysts, programmers, engineers, developers, and vendors. Our members also come from a variety of departments like information technology, management engineering, medical records (I know the preferred term is HIM), nursing, clinical settings, physicians, and yes even financial settings like the business office. We have become an eclectic group and the board agreed we should try to include you all in our programs. As a result our annual conferences will have two distinctive tracks this year. Our fall conference scheduled for October 7, 2005 will focus on operational issues and is titled “Funding IT Initiatives Today”. Our spring conference scheduled for May 5, 2006 will have a more technical focus and is called “Technical Infrastructure: the Future is Now”. As we have in the past we will focus on speakers with real-life practical solutions to the issues we all face. An added feature for both conferences, to continue our theme of inclusion, will be a wrap-up session where the members can all participate in a town hall discussion to ask questions of your peers and exchange ideas. In addition to our local conferences we will once again sponsor with the Kentucky and Indiana chapters our Tri-State luncheon at the national conference in San Diego. All our members are invited to a “free lunch” on Monday February 13, 2006 at a location near the conference convention center. Stayed tuned for more information about this popular event. Another area of focus for our chapter will be increasing our membership role. For those members who have recently renewed we say thank you. For those of you who have not we are interested in learning why not? What can we do to make membership more attractive? Did you know for example that you do not have to be a national member to join our local chapter? For $30 a year anyone can be a member of our local chapter. If travel is an obstacle the board has discussed mini-road shows to highlight specific topics of interest. Tell us what you want and we’ll try to make it happen. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to meet your peers, share your ideas, and help shape the future of CSOHIMSS. Again I want to say thank you for your past participation and support. I hope you will find this new-year as interesting and exciting as I think it will be. If you have any ideas you want to share or learn more about, or have an interest in presenting at one of the conferences please contact us at contactus@csohimss.org. We really do want to have you included. Sincerely, Bill Mitchin CSOHIMSS Announcement New Chapter Board for Fiscal Year 2005-2006 Annual Elections have completed for the CSOHIMSS Chapter. Election results should have been communicated to all Board members via e-mail. Current Board members are always listed on the Left Panel of the most recent Newsletter as well as on the Chapter Website at: www.csohimss.org. All Board positions carry with them a two year and a seat on the Board of Directors for the chapter. FYI, if you are ever interested in becoming a chapter President, serving on the Board for a minimum of one year is a prerequisite. Also, get plugged into what is going on at the chapter level and have an influential voice in what activities and conferences our chapter sponsors. If you are interested in becoming more involved in chapter activities or if you are interested in volunteering in any other capacity, please contact Darby Dennis, at contactus@csohimss.org. |
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