For HHM Health, an FQHC serving the Dallas area, interoperability and access to medical records is vital for establishing trust with their patients and saving lives. The team leans on various modules from eClinicalWorks, including Prisma, which allows them to retrieve records from a variety of information exchanges – a feature that helped them save the life of new patient.
Healthcare IT Today had the opportunity to sit down with Geli Brown, Senior Director of Quality Management at HHM Health to learn more about how they are using technology to improve the lives of patients and to achieve their goal of becoming the top-choice provider in their community.
Trust is Key for FQHCs
HHM Health has been a federally qualified health center (FQHC) since 2016. Prior to that, it was a volunteer community health center that was started by a school-based nurse who saw a need to treat children who did not have access to care or insurance. HHM Health is located in the North Texas and Dallas are. They provide medical, dental, behavioral health, vision, imaging and pharmacy services.
Building and maintaining trust with patients is critical for FQHCs because many in the communities they serve are new to the country, have had bad experiences with other parts of the healthcare system or do not speak English fluently. HHM Health works hard to establish trust by having a team that reflects the community they serve and having interpreters at the ready to help communicate with patients.
HHM also establishes trust by having all patient records in a single system and accessible to any clinician at the click of a button.
“A lot of our patients don’t speak English,” said Brown. “So it is very complicated and very difficult for them to navigate the healthcare process. They have to repeat their entire life story, every time they go to a different provider. It gets frustrating and a lot of them get very discouraged because they think you don’t understand them or that you don’t have the information.”
In other words, not having a patient’s medical information erodes trust with the healthcare organization. That’s why HHM Health has invested resources, time, and effort into their eClinicalWorks system.
Leveraging Multiple Modules from eClinicalWorks
By having all information in a single repository, any of their staff can call up a patient’s information from any clinic at any time.
“It’s very comforting for our patients because we can make sure we’re keeping up with everything,” explained Brown. “We can keep them on track so that they’re progressing and getting better. Plus, they don’t have to worry about repeating their story multiple times.”
HHM Health uses multiple modules from eClinicalWorks including:
- Patient portal so that patients can interact with HHM Health asynchronously
- Appointment reminders to keep patients on track
- Healow for payment services
- Prisma for records retrieval from other healthcare organizations
Interoperability Saves Lives
Prisma is eClinicalWorks’ health information search engine. It brings together medical records from both Carequality and CommonWell Health Alliance networks as well as from a number of insurance payers.
Brown illustrated the importance of Prisma to their community with the following example:
We had a brand new patient come in. He was an Afghan refugee for his very first appointment with us and as the medical assistant was calling him to the back to triage with vitals. One of the providers just happened to be standing in the hallway and was like: “Wait. Stop. Don’t move. Let’s call 9-1-1. Let’s get him a chair. Let’s get him seated.”
We were all wondering what was going on? It turns out that the patient was in the process of having a stroke. She noticed the symptoms.
We were able to go in and pull hospital records from Prisma so that she could see previous history, what medications he was on, a past EKG that he had, and we were able to get him immediate help so that he didn’t have long-term effects from what was going on. He was ever so grateful and still comes to our clinic now for his follow-up appointments.
Interoperability saves lives.
Watch the interview with Geli Brown to learn:
- The fun story of how HHM Health help a patient learn how to properly use a remote monitoring device
- How HHM Health providers are trained to look at the patient holistically through eClinicalWorks to ensure they remain on track with their health
- Why it is important for HHM Health to not look like a free clinic
Learn more about HHM Health at https://www.hhmhealth.org/
Learn more about eClinicalWorks at https://www.eclinicalworks.com/
Listen and subscribe to the Healthcare IT Today Interviews Podcast to hear all the latest insights from experts in healthcare IT.
And for an exclusive look at our top stories, subscribe to our newsletter.
Tell us what you think. Contact us here or on Twitter at @hcitoday. And if you’re interested in advertising with us, check out our various advertising packages and request our Media Kit.
eClinicalWorks is a sponsor of Healthcare Scene
