Northeast Health Connects with Physician Practices through New Ambulatory Services Outreach Offering
(3/26/2007)

Northeast Health (Troy, NY) has recently gone LIVE with a new ambulatory services outreach offering. With this interface, lab orders originating in another vendor's system flow seamlessly from associated physician practices to Northeast Health's MEDITECH system at their Samaritan Hospital care facility. Information is then automatically integrated into the hospital's centralized MEDITECH system, including the Laboratory, Microbiology, Blood Bank, Pathology, Admissions, Order Entry, and Billing applications. Likewise, diagnostic results and relevant clinical information then flow back from Samaritan hospital to the physician practices and are filed in the practice's electronic medical records.

A longtime MEDITECH customer, Samaritan Hospital cites its partnership with MEDITECH as being invaluable throughout the Beta testing and implementation processes. "Working together with MEDITECH, we were able to ensure that the solution would be seamless for the end user, and that it would accommodate our workflow. For instance, all orders placed at one time come in together so staff can work efficiently. Also, all data is formatted into MEDITECH's system so the look and feel is consistent to the end user," states Cris Mendoza, laboratory information system coordinator at Samaritan Hospital. "From a financial perspective, the interface solution integrates directly with Billing, helping to close the loop on our revenue cycle and promoting faster, more efficient billing processes."

As with all of MEDITECH's solutions, patient safety and confidentiality were key considerations when designing this interface suite, according to MEDITECH's Interoperability Manager Lori Messier. "Patient data from the physician practices automatically integrates with Samaritan Hospital's system via MEDITECH's Master Patient Index (MPI) Smart Search capability," she says. "The system performs an electronic search using data elements such as name, gender, and date of birth, thereby ensuring information is attached to the correct patient's record."

Installing the ambulatory services outreach offering is just one of many steps health care organizations can take to achieve greater connectivity among health care facilities, according to Messier. "Health care organizations need viable tools that can help them overcome the complex challenges associated with standardizing and truly integrating data, while ensuring patient safety and privacy of personal data," she says. "MEDITECH's philosophy and system design support these goals."

 

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