Rochester Regional Health is using a measured and practical approach to data interoperability. They have focused their efforts on data that clinicians want to use, that fits their workflow, and can be seamlessly incorporated into their Epic system. They started with lab data and this integration, on its own, is having a positive impact on patient care.
Healthcare IT Today sat down with Erik Jacob, Director of Interoperability at Rochester Regional Health (RRH) and Charlie Harp, CEO at Clinical Architecture to discuss how a practical, measured approach to interoperability is preferable to a tsunami of data.
Starting Simple with Interoperability
RRH began integrating external lab data into their Epic EMR to elevate interoperability. They chose lab data due to its well-established standards and its potential to support improved clinical decision-making for patient care.
“Starting with labs made sense,” shared Jacob. “We needed to bring in external lab data from the many health information exchanges in New York state to augment our charts. Our clinicians needed that information so it was our job to get it to them.”
RRH used Clinical Architecture’s data quality platform to create the bridge between the New York Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) and their Epic system. When the work was done, the lab data seamlessly appeared within Epic. RRH clinicians did not have to learn to use a new interface or alter their workflows.
“When you think about all the different telemetry we get about a patient, medications are important because it lets us know what’s going on with a patient from a treatment perspective and give us insight into what their likely diagnosis is if you don’t have that. But, lab data is the closest thing you have to status on a human being and how they are doing,” added Harp
Interoperability is about Quality Not Quantity
Both Jacob and Harp emphasized the importance of data quality over data quantity in terms of interoperability. Jacob was quick to answer with a resounding “NO” when asked if he would like to turn on the fire hose of available interoperable data.
“I wouldn’t turn it all on,” stated Jacob. “We need to carefully look at the data. We need to make it purposeful. Just bringing in a CCDA document is nice, but if it doesn’t fit your clinical, analytical or population health needs, then why expend all that effort?”
“Effort is needed to make data something that clinicians can take advantage of,” agreed Harp. “Right now, the onus of making use of data is always on the consumer. That is challenging for some organizations.”
Jacob and Harp both believe that the healthcare industry needs to improve the QUALITY of data along with making data more interoperable. In the current operating model, each healthcare organization that pulls data from an external source must expend a lot of effort to make that data usable. If more was done to ensure the data was high quality and usable BEFORE being placed into an information exchange, organizations retrieving that data would not need to expend as much effort.
Shifting the onus for data quality to the provider of the data will not be easy. There is no compelling incentive to do so. Jacob and Harp hope this will change in the future.
Unintended Benefit of Interoperability
When RRH made the effort to incorporate lab data, the return on investment (ROI) they were seeking was improved patient outcomes and better clinical decisions. They achieved both.
However, there was an unintended benefit of their interoperability efforts. By creating the automation with Clinical Architecture’s platform, RRH was able to leverage the same data bridge to help accelerate acquisitions.
When a new organization was acquired, it fell to Jacob and the IT team to integrate the acquired entity’s data as quickly and as accurately as possible. Because of the work they put in to fully understand their lab data and map it, they were able to greatly reduce the effort needed to ingest the new lab data.
After doing a comparison, Jacob realized that instead of the twelve people it took to map all of the lab data previously (over the course of months), when utilizing Clinical Architecture’s software they were able to run that same data through their interface and immediately return the same results without any delay.
“It gains us automation, it gains us scalability to tackle all of those things and really direct the review of those experts,” said Jacob. “Instead of a team of twelve, we can now run through that information and put it in front of the head pathologist…you’ve really streamlined your data acquisition, the work to actually map, and the verification of that content so it really drives a process that’s repeatable and saves a lot of time when looking at converting information from one system to another.”
Listening to Jacob and Harp, it is hard not to think of the old adage about eating an elephant – only here RRH is showing that overcoming the interoperability “elephant” can be done one practical byte at a time.
Watch the interview with Erik Jacob and Charlie Harp to learn:
- Why trusting data coming from an outside source is as important as making that data interoperable
- How Rochester Regional Health collaborated with Clinical Architecture to create automation that would ensure high quality data is fed into the Epic system
Learn more about Rochester Regional Health at https://www.rochesterregional.org/
Learn more about Clinical Architecture at https://clinicalarchitecture.com/
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