CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--GE Healthcare today announced that it has received Carequality certification to enable seamless data sharing by its ambulatory EHR customers with thousands of hospitals, physician practices, payer networks, vendors and consumer services nationally. Already a KLAS top performer for interoperability impact on patient care1, GE Healthcare built upon its existing expertise in providing digital tools to improve care coordination with its certification.
Beyond meeting the criteria to participate in the Carequality Interoperability Framework, which include legal, policy and technical qualifications for interoperability, the company has achieved effective integration of connected data and data exchange processes into clinician workflows. It has done so by introducing Centricity* Healthcare Connections Hospital Connect for Centricity* Practice Solution and Centricity EMR customers, with a strong emphasis on usability.
The Oregon Clinic, an ambulatory practice with 150 providers in 30 specialties, and GE Healthcare have piloted this workflow-enabled model to enable the Clinic’s physicians to rapidly access critical data from multiple external sources. With this solution, the group expects to save individual clinicians at least one hour per day on chart reviews and information searches, reduce the number of duplicative tests and unnecessary services, and deliver higher quality, more personalized care to patients.
“Seamless integration of clinical data across care settings helps increase provider efficiency and enhance care quality,” said Tim Fitzgerald, Director of IT at The Oregon Clinic.
By deploying this Carequality-enabled, workflow-focused information exchange solution in the cloud, GE Healthcare customers can expect a simple and scalable solution that supports clinical decision support and population health management, as well as better data sharing with patients, their caregivers and other providers.
“As clinicians seek not just simplified data exchange but also real-time data integration, analytics and insights, this solution is a model for more effective care coordination and a critical factor in the achievement of patient-centric value-based care,” said Mark Segal, PhD, Vice President of Government and Industry Affairs at GE Healthcare Digital.
For ambulatory practices, current referral and information flow processes can waste provider and staff time and lack flexibility. Hospitals face the same challenges and also suffer from limited or no access to ambulatory records or detailed care plans, especially after-hours. By providing real-time access to clinical data, the GE Healthcare data exchange solution can help providers accomplish the shared goals of reducing costs while ensuring patients receive more comprehensive, personalized and efficient care.
As of August 2017, more than 260,000 physicians across approximately 23,000 clinics and 850 hospitals can share health data through Carequality. GE Healthcare customers using this solution will have access to all of these exchange partners and the many others who continue to come online each month. Additionally, GE Healthcare customers will be able to take advantage of the collaboration between CommonWell and Carequality. Announced in December 2016, the collaboration enables subscribers of the two initiatives, representing more than 90 percent of the acute EHR market and nearly 60 percent of the ambulatory EHR market, to exchange health information with each other.
* Centricity is a trademark of General Electric Company
About GE Healthcare
GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and services to meet the demand for increased access, enhanced quality and more affordable healthcare around the world. GE (NYSE: GE) works on things that matter - great people and technologies taking on tough challenges. From medical imaging, software & IT, patient monitoring and diagnostics to drug discovery, biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies and performance improvement solutions, GE Healthcare helps medical professionals deliver great healthcare to their patients. For more information about GE Healthcare, visit our website at www.gehealthcare.com.
About Carequality
Carequality is a national-level, consensus-built, common interoperability framework to enable exchange between and among health data sharing networks. Carequality brings together a diverse group of representatives, including electronic health record (EHR) vendors, record locator service (RLS) providers, and other types of existing networks from the private sector and government, to determine technical and policy agreements to enable data to flow between and among networks, platforms, and geographies, much like the telecommunications industry did for linking cell phone networks. For more information, visit www.carequality.org and follow us at twitter.com/carequalitynet.
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1 Source: KLAS, Interoperability 2016 From a Clinical View: Frustrating Reality or Hopeful Future 2016, Figure 16, p. 26.