Baylor Health Care System

Baylor Health Care System is a large and prominent academic teaching healthcare organization with twelve hospital facilities and a physician practice network with numerous clinics. They have been recognized nationally for excellence in using information technology. As part of a Baylor strategic initiative to significantly transform its delivery system, Baylor embarked on a re-engineering process to integrate its information systems. Baylor has historically been a “best of breed” IT buyer and they elected to go with Eclipsys as their clinical strategic partner for the future. As part of this initiative, the BHCS Identity Management System seeks to simplify access to care, facilitate the coordination of care, optimize diagnosis and treatment and improve customer satisfaction, all while better understanding the continuum of care from wellness to illness.

Baylor deployed Initiate® software to link data across its ten disparate systems in twelve facilities and provide the ability to assign enterprise identifiers to an already existing Enterprise Data Warehouse. Baylor will also use Initiate software to review and manage both facility and corporate level duplicate records and tasks. Along with the ability for a browser-based patient search at the point of service, Baylor will also use Initiate’s flexibility and scalability to customize the software to their needs. 

Read more about Baylor Health Care System's success.

BMI Healthcare

BMI Healthcare, part of NetCare, is the largest network of private hospitals in the United Kingdom, with 49 separate facilities encompassing more than 2,200 beds across England, Scotland and Wales. BMI is facing increasing competition from NHS and wants to partner with NHS through Amicus Healthcare on the diagnostic and treatment center front. However, in order to partner with NHS, BMI must demonstrate compliance with a number of information system criteria, such as supporting the NHS number and ‘Choose and Book’. Since BMI’s growth stemmed largely from acquisitions, with each facility retaining its own legacy system for managing patient data, replacing all the systems across the network was far too costly and risky, so BMI needed to find a way to enable interoperability among existing systems.

Initiate worked with several partners to achieve BMI’s goals. BridgeForward is providing the EAI tools enabling integration with new and existing legacy systems, using both web services and screen scraping. Agilisys is functioning as the integrator, while UltaGenda is providing the Enterprise Outpatient Scheduling application. The consortium beat out 17 other RFP responders. 

The first hospital to deploy, Coventry Meridian Hospital, went live in January 2006, and the remaining will go live over an 18 month period ending mid-late 2007. When fully deployed, BMI’ employees, patients and clinicians will benefit in a multitude of ways, from improved demographic data analysis, a consolidated view of patients, better purchasing and contract maintenance capabilities, access to online appointments and easier rescheduling, better access to research, and more. Networked insurers will also benefit from online billing, enquiry handling, verification and authorization. NHS integration will also be enabled.

Read more about success at BMI Healthcare.

Carolinas Healthcare System

Carolinas Healthcare System is the fourth largest public healthcare system in the US and the largest in the Carolinas, with a network of 19 hospitals, 9 extended care facilities, home health agencies, radiation therapy facilities, physical therapy facilities and other operations with a total of 4,900 licensed beds. Carolinas employs more than 25,000 people.

With disparate systems across hospitals and physician practices, Initiate software has helped Carolinas correct numerous problems that had stemmed from poor identity management. With rapid growth and continued expansion across Carolinas’ geographic region, they were encountering high patient overlap and familial commonality leading to a high duplicate rate, especially with trauma patients and inter-facility transfers. As a result of duplicates, patient safety was potentially compromised, since the sickest patients were the most likely to have multiple records. Medical costs were also rising as a result of duplicate tests, while patients were more likely to get incorrect bills.

Carolina has more than 1000 registration points.  Upon beginning the project, Carolinas had 1.2 million records in their McKesson STAR EMR and 800,000 in IDX, for a total of 2 million records.  The initial deployment of the Initiate EMPI began in 2005 with the passive integration of McKesson STAR and IDX Flowcast, and then active-integration using Initiate software with McKesson STAR. Upon completion of the passive rollout, Initiate began an electronic & physical remediation project of duplicates in the McKesson STAR system. The completion of the remediation project in August 2006 resulted in 80,000 merged records in STAR. IDX duplicates were minimal.

Another important goal for Carolinas was to use the Initiate EID as a “source of truth” within their Cerner EMR. With Initiate managing 90,000 plus transactions daily to Cerner, the EID translation has been a critical milestone in the deployment of the patient identity solution.  ADT transactions from STAR, IDX, and Cerner all go through Initiate and out to Cerner with an Initiate-assigned EID.

The final phase of the Initiate project, active integration with IDX using the Enterprise Integrator, is slated to be completed late 2007. Initiate’s EMPI solution has provided Carolinas with a patient identity management solution that allows the patient identity management team to manage linkage, overlay and duplicate tasks in near real-time.  Carolinas is able to issue an alert to physicians or clinics if an identity problem arises from the point of registration while the patient is still in front of them.

Currently Carolinas has more than 200 registration points with Initiate software version 6.1, with approximately 4 million total records and 125k messages per day. Identity errors have dropped by 75%. The goal for the future is to integrate the EMPI technology into all patient points of entries.

Northeast Georgia Health System

Northeast Georgia Health System includes two hospital campuses, two nursing homes, an imaging center and a primary care network, with plans for expansion as the region continues to grow in population. To keep pace with this growth, NGHS turned to Initiate to prepare their system for deploying an EMR and PACS and improve their search capabilities across multiple facilities.

NGHS started with an MPI cleanup to ensure the right level of data quality and to remediate the growing number of international names.  

NGHS is using Initiate software with their McKesson Healthquest registration system and in their HIM Department to more accurately identify and manage patient identities. They are also deploying integration to the physician practice community by implementing Enterprise Integrator with IDX Groupcast. This will provide the seamless and real-time linking across their enterprise, ensuring that accurate identification is occurring prior to clinical information flowing to their Allscripts EMR. NGHS has already benefited from Initiate in numerous ways:

• More accurate patient identity search capabilities
• Minimized potential risk of medical error associated with duplicate records
• Physicians have improved access to patient information, regardless of which NGHS facility provided care
• With the addition of the CICS EMPI Adaptor from Quovadx, NGHS will experience seamless workflow integration between the registration system and the Initiate software
• Decreased rate of duplicate records – before the MPI cleanup, the potential duplicate error rate was 12%; today, it is a mere 0.76%

Read more about success at NGHS.

Park Nicollet Health Services  

Park Nicollet Health Services is a nonprofit integrated care system comprised of nearly 8,000 employees, including 543 physicians, based in suburban Minneapolis. Park Nicollet includes 34 facilities with an average of 1.9 million clinic/physician visits and 29,000 hospital admissions each year.

Park Nicollet’s EMPI has 4.2 million records and processes 23,000 ADT transactions each day, using IDX LastWord as their electronic medical record and single entry point for registrations. More than 800 employees create and update registrations, causing a 4% duplicate error rate on newly created registrations.

Park Nicollet chose Initiate because they wanted the power of the ALTA algorithms, an enterprise view of patients and the flexibility to do just-in-time clean up while having future scalability. They are currently using Initiate software to:

• Detect and clean up duplicates
• Reduce duplicate creations
• See locations of converted and obsolete chart and radiology jackets
• Pre-screen patients
• Manage laboratory services such as the blood bank
• Meet risk management initiatives by enabling patient fraud investigation and tracking narcotic procurement
• Help Call Center staff look up patients
• Monitor data trending, feedback and education  

In the coming year, Park Nicollet also plans to deploy additional Initiate components to help several initiatives, including:

• Patient safety – assist staff in selecting the right patient
• Reducing lead time to find the right patient the first time
• Building patient and care-giver confidence
• Reduce costs
• “Head off” duplicate creation problem by 90% within two years
• Householding – better understand relationships between patients

Partners HealthCare

Partners HealthCare in Massachusetts is an integrated health system that was founded by Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital and includes several other hospitals, primary care and specialty practices, and other health entities.

Partners engaged Initiate for analytical and consulting services before deciding to license the Initiate scoring SDK to embed into their own home-grown EMPI. They went live in July 2005 with 13 sources sharing data in the EMPI. Partners’ EMPI is currently managing 4.3 million records, handling about 80,000 transactions daily.

Partners is also involved with MA-SHARE and the Record Locator Service and is using Initiate’s scoring SDK to help them succeed with these projects.

Pathology Associates Medical Laboratories, Inc. (PAML)

Pathology Associates Medical Laboratories (PAML) manages more than 6 million patient records across 100 source systems. PAML determined that delivering a complete, accurate view of each patient would improve patient service and satisfaction. To achieve this goal, PAML implemented an Enterprise Master Patient Index (EMPI) using Initiate software. The EMPI links patient records within and across sources so that:

Patients receive a single bill reflecting all their episodes of care, regardless of where the care was provided or which insurance provider is responsible for the claim

Patients can track their deductibles, co-pays and other financial matters in a single statement

Physicians can view comprehensive, linked lab results from multiple doctors and hospitals, enabling them to recognize trends, make comparisons and deliver higher quality, more cost effective patient care.

Read more about success at PAML.

RxHub

RxHub processes 1 million transactions per month in a database of approximately 150 million members belonging to three pharmacy benefit management organizations (Advanced PCS, Medco and ExpressScripts). RxHub enables physicians to view a patient’s prescription history and guard against negative drug interactions. Pharmacists in the RxHub network can also view prescription histories, allergy information and details on insurance benefits.

RxHub implemented Initiate software to better serve physicians and patients via the software’s powerful, accurate and high-performing search capability. In addition to enjoying an average response time of under ¼ second, RxHub asserts that it has not had a false positive result in the three years since it deployed Initiate software.

Read more about success at RxHub.

Sentara Health

Sentara Health System manages approximately 4 million patient records across numerous source systems. Although their registration vendor assigned a corporate level identifier, Sentara could not accurately use the identifier to link patient records in real time. Sentara deployed Initiate software to quickly link its patient data without needing to undergo data cleansing. Today, Sentara can accurately search and link patient records in real time on a platform that enables it to adapt easily to future business requirements and evolving technology strategies.

Read more about success at Sentara Health.

SureScripts

Founded in 2001 to improve the quality, safety and efficiency of the overall prescribing process, SureScripts is the largest network provider of electronic prescribing services. The SureScripts Electronic Prescribing Network™ is a healthcare infrastructure that establishes electronic communications between pharmacists and physicians, enabling the two-way electronic exchange of prescription information. 90% of all pharmacies in the US are certified on the SureScripts network, including Brooks, CVS, Longs, RiteAid and Walgreens. SureScripts was also instrumental in the post-Hurricane Katrina relief effort, as they worked to provide displaced residents with their proper prescriptions.

SureScripts chose Initiate as an EMPI partner to implement two new initiatives. Initiate software will help SureScripts provide physicians with a single view of a patient’s medication history from community pharmacies, regardless of retail brand or location, providing physicians with more detailed, clinical information on a patient’s current – and previous – medications. The Initiate EMPI will match physician requests for a patient’s medication history with the corresponding records across all connected pharmacies.

SureScripts’ second initiative includes delivering patient formulary and eligibility across the system. This new SureScripts service will use Initiate software to make more eligibility and formulary information available at the point of care, in real time. As a result, more “clean” prescriptions sent to pharmacies will require fewer follow-up phone calls from pharmacists and prescription benefit managers (PBMs).

Initiate implemented its software in seven months, finishing in spring 2006, and is currently managing over 17 million records.

Read more about success at SureScripts.

Sutter Health System 

Sutter Health is one of the nation’s leading not-for-profit health delivery systems, serving more than 100 communities in Northern California through its hospitals, clinics, imaging facilities, physician groups and other facilities. Since patients interact with Sutter across multiple facilities, Sutter is implementing a single Enterprise Master Patient Index (EMPI) based on Initiate software. Sutter has already incorporated several Sacramento area facilities and a medical imaging system into Initiate software. Over the next two years, Sutter plans to incorporate its remaining facilities into the EMPI, providing enterprise matching and searching to individual facilities while enabling them to retain their own medical records systems.

Read more about success at Sutter Heatlh System.

University Physicians Healthcare

University Physicians Healthcare (UPH) is a nonprofit corporation founded in 1985 as the medical practice of the physicians of The University of Arizona College of Medicine. With over 350 physicians, 260 nurses and 1,250 staff, UPH is Arizona’s largest physicians group. UPH provides patient care, educates medical students, trains physicians and conducts clinical research.

The doctors at UMC in Tucson, Health Sciences and UPH all work for UPH. These organizations encompass two registration and billing systems, Keane INSIGHT for inpatient/hospital and IDX Flowcast for outpatient/health plan/clinics. UPH wanted an EMPI solution to link identifiers in the two systems to provide better patient care, ease of billing, and other advantages.

The initial deployment of the Initiate EMPI began in 2006 with the active integration of Keane and IDX. Initiate software version 7.0 was implemented in seven months, finishing in February 2007.  

Wellpoint

Wellpoint maintains a database of over 80 million active and inactive subscriber and dependent membership records from several distinct lines of business. To comply with a California law prohibiting businesses from using a person’s Social Security Number as an identifier for non-tax purposes (CA SB168), Wellpoint implemented a membership recognition and management system using Initiate software. The Initiate Systems software’s highly accurate probabilistic searching and linking capabilities enable Wellpoint to identify current, historic and complex customer relationships in real time. Today, Wellpoint’s average search times are less than 100 milliseconds against a population of 80 million records.