SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Advocate Health Care in Oak Brook, Ill., has deployed Certify Data Systems, Inc.’s interoperability solution as the essential infrastructure for its enterprise health information exchange. Under its agreement with Advocate, Certify is offering its HealthDock™ interoperability product to Advocate’s 12 Chicago-area hospitals and affiliated physicians.
On Feb. 21, Certify will present an interactive discussion with John Norenberg, VP of Physician Services, Advocate Health Care, at the Peabody Orlando in Orlando, Fla. To register for this event or for other meetings with Norenberg and Certify executives, please visit http://www.certifydatasystems.com/norenberg/.
Advocate, the largest fully integrated not-for-profit healthcare system in Illinois, is nationally recognized both for its clinical quality and its progressive implementation of healthcare technology. Installed in physician offices across the country, Certify’s HealthDock™ appliance bridges the connectivity “last mile” in a manner that is uniquely easy to deploy, scale, manage and support, allowing hospitals to securely and seamlessly interface with their physicians’ electronic medical record (EMR) systems in real time. The Certify solution helps hospitals, health systems and eligible providers meet the “meaningful use” criteria issued by the Department of Health and Human Services, while improving delivery of patient care.
Installed in Advocate’s affiliated physician offices, the HealthDock™ enables the flow of critical clinical electronic data – such as lab results, pathology reports, radiology and transcription reports – between the physician practices and the Advocate hospitals even if they utilize different EMR systems. In the first six months, the HealthDock™ has been deployed in 29 of Advocate’s affiliated physician offices across 15 different EMRs.
“We chose Certify as our strategic partner because we believe their technology platform offers significant long-term advantages as we build our enterprise health information exchange,” said Norenberg. “Today, Certify is solving the very complicated problem of integrating disparate EMR systems and enabling the exchange of critical patient information among physicians at a transactional level so they can improve quality of care. Looking ahead, we see the Certify technology as a key component of our interoperability strategy and our efforts to build a true, patient-centric HIE that will enable us to reach out and connect with others, including the larger community, the government and other entities.”
“Advocate’s choice of the Certify technology is further affirmation of Certify’s ability to help healthcare organizations achieve full semantic interoperability,” said Marc Willard, Certify Data Systems’ Founder and CEO. “The Certify solution allows hospitals and health systems to deliver immediate value to their affiliated physicians by tackling the most difficult and time-consuming task of meaningful HIE from the outset. Successful HIE depends upon first connecting physicians electronically at the point of care. Making the investment now to provide ‘last-mile’ connectivity gives forward-thinking health systems like Advocate a competitive edge, especially as the number of physicians using EMRs will increase exponentially over the next several years.”
The Certify solution is easy to install and use and requires no additional software to be installed in Advocate’s affiliated physician offices. In its initial deployment at affiliated physician practices, the Certify solution significantly eliminated distribution of clinical data via paper, fax and Web portals, which required staff to manually scan or re-key this information into the EMRs. As a result, the Certify technology allowed the office to work within their current workflows while reducing labor costs, delays in interpretation and the potential for medical errors due to incorrect re-keying.
“The advantages we found with the Certify technology were that it was very easy to use and saved us a tremendous amount of time and effort,” said Arturo Chavarria, M.D., with PriCare Internal Medicine. “Having the patient data flow directly and instantly into our EMR – without our having to log in to a web portal to look for it or wait for it to appear via the fax machine – has made a significant difference in our ability to care for our patients. Not only are lab results and other reports available in a timely manner, the accuracy of the data has been improved since our staff no longer has to manually transcribe it into our EMR.”
About Certify Data Systems
Certify Data Systems, Inc. enables connectivity between hospitals and physicians in a manner that is uniquely easy to deploy, scale, manage and support. Certify employs sophisticated, proprietary technology that is fundamentally different from any other solution available today. Through the HealthDock™ appliance, Certify simplifies the time-consuming, resource-intensive and traditionally expensive process of interfacing with physician EMRs. Certify gives hospitals and health systems a new tool to seamlessly connect their physicians. The Certify solution delivers health information across the “last mile” of interoperability without changing the way hospitals or physicians work. Certify is headquartered in San Jose, Calif. For more information please visit the Certify website at www.certifydatasystems.com.
HealthDock™ is a trademark of Certify Data Systems, Inc.
About Advocate Health Care
Advocate Health Care, one of the nation's top 10 health systems, based on clinical performance, is the largest health system in Illinois and one of the largest health care providers in the Midwest. Advocate operates more than 250 sites of care, including 10 acute care hospitals, two integrated children's hospitals, five Level I trauma centers (the state's highest designation in trauma care), two Level II trauma centers, one of the area's largest home health care companies and one of the region's largest medical groups. Advocate Health Care trains more primary care physicians and residents at its three major teaching hospitals than any other health system in the state. As a not-for-profit, mission-based health system affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the United Church of Christ, Advocate contributed $462 million in charitable care and services to communities across Chicagoland in 2009.