• Background: As Louisiana’s largest private health system, Ochsner Health System includes 7 hospitals, 33 neighborhood health centers, 4 fitness centers and a hotel, employing 10,000 people. Since Hurricane Katrina, Ochsner has been on the front lines of unparalleled population shifts.
• Challenge: Properly identify patients across systems and facilities to streamline registration and support the EMR, while also scaling for continued growth and interoperability.
• Solution: Ochsner chose Initiate® enterprise master person index (EMPI) software as the foundation of Ochsner’s electronic medical records (EMR) and patient registration systems
• Results: Ochsner has enhanced the patient experience across its growing network through better patient identification, streamlined registration procedures, improved data exchange and more. Ochsner

Ochsner Health System is Louisiana’s largest private, non-university-based health system, including 7 hospitals, 33 neighborhood health centers, 4 fitness centers and the Brent House hotel, located throughout Southeast Louisiana. Ochsner employs more than 10,000 people, including 600 physicians in 80 medical specialties and subspecialties. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Ochsner has been on the front lines of unparalleled population shifts. As patients continue to move into the region, the need to share patient data across facilities has become increasingly real. Additionally, Ochsner has acquired three community hospitals in the New Orleans metropolitan area and is now in the process of merging several disparate patient information systems.

Challenge

Properly identifying patients across systems and facilities to streamline registration and support the EMR, while also scaling for continued growth and interoperability. As Ochsner battled with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and later integrated new facilities, it encountered duplicate and overlapping patient records at a rate of 15% among the various legacy systems. Each system had its own method for tracking patient identification, making the data integration process extremely difficult.

Chris Belmont, Assistant Vice President Corporate Information Systems at Ochsner Health System, led the initiative to overcome the problem and move the business forward: “We needed a sophisticated EMPI that would help us manage through the chaos, accurately detecting duplicate patient records across our systems while maintaining the integrity of our data, so that patients can easily be cared for in any one of our facilities throughout the region. The old MPI was not meeting our requirements and we needed to replace it with something that would be aligned with our future plans.”

Ochsner was also working with IBM Global Business Services to add to existing health information systems investments in Siemens InVision, while also continuing to operate a Perot Systems PBAR and a home-grown practice management system. The existing master patient indexes (MPIs) were not scaleable to provide the level of sophisticated patient identification required to support the registration and EMR systems.

Solution

IBM and Initiate Systems partnered to deliver an enterprise master person index (EMPI) as the foundation of Ochsner’s electronic medical records (EMR) and patient registration systems across the entire network.

Working with Ochsner, IBM and Initiate Systems recognized the gaps in the existing infrastructure and proposed Initiate® software to meet the requirements for scalability and best-of-breed reliability in patient identification, while enabling the system to grow with the organization. IBM is providing implementation services using ProLink 4 Methodology for both Initiate software and the ongoing integration of Siemens InVision and the EMR system.

An EMPI is a foundational element to EMR and other strategic goals. Initiate EMPI software will enable Ochsner to realize a larger and quicker return on investment while laying the foundation for future initiatives like patient portals, revenue cycle management, business analytics, IHE integration and more. Ochsner is poised to achieve several goals, including:

• Improved patient identification, even across disparate patient databases


• Enhanced patient registration experience by streamlining billing and reducing the need to repeatedly give the same demographic data


• Streamlined data exchange and interoperability across facilities


• Lowered administrative costs with systematic identity resolution


• Enhanced patient safety through better patient identification


• Real-time decision-making opportunities for physicians through better access to a patient’s records at the point of care


• An information infrastructure for efficiently incorporating new facilities and their legacy systems to enable further expansion

Results

Ochsner has moved a step closer to achieving its key corporate objective of delivering a superior healthcare experience to patients across the growing Ochsner delivery network. In their words, the new EMPI will allow Ochsner to:

• Acquire and resolve duplicate patient records from across multiple practice management and scheduling systems


• Integrate with the Louisiana Regional Health Information Organization (LA RHIO) to help ensure regional emergency preparedness


• Support migration to Siemens INVISION


• Achieve solid data foundation for their future SOA strategy


• Implement a flexible architecture to incorporate patient records into existing systems from newly acquired facilities over time


• Manage more than 2 million patient records at sub-second response times

Initiate Systems and IBM combine their strengths of software and services to deliver solutions that help care delivery organizations like Ochsner improve quality of care, increase profitability and comply with regulatory requirements. The enhanced solution will help Ochsner quickly add new hospitals and extend quality care to the outlying areas still reeling from Hurricane Katrina’s devastation. Patient records from the new facilities will be accurately integrated into existing records, creating a master EMR for each patient that is available in real time to all physicians.