LIPIX – Enhancing Efficiency and Patient Care Through Interconnectivity
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
The Long Island Patient Information eXchange (LIPIX) was developed as the regional healthcare information organization (RHIO) of Long Island. Throughout the last four years, LIPIX has implemented services designed to continue its mission of improving the quality and efficiency of regional health care.
Photo: Physicians are able to keep all of their patients’ care providers up to speed with timely and accurate information by utilizing the LIPIX system.
Started with the purpose of facilitating health information exchange and connecting area hospitals and physicians, LIPIX was initially funded through the Health Care Efficiency and Affordability Law (HEAL) Phase 1 New York State grant. Since its inception, LIPIX has not only achieved its goal of facilitating interconnectivity, but it also offers a variety of services that physicians can utilize in daily practice to more easily access patient information and communicate important details with other physicians.
“During the last four years, we have implemented the technical infrastructure and policy framework to support a sustainable RHIO,” says Adam Becker, Vice President of Sales, Marketing and Outreach for LIPIX. “We are still continuing that effort. In addition to our core services that are designed to enhance interconnectivity and provide physicians with access to knowledge, we have also created add-on, value-based services that are layered upon the infrastructure we have built.”
The Value of Interconnectivity
As health care continues to evolve, physicians have been expected to transition their patients’ health records to a digital system through the use of electronic health records (EHRs). While this system allows information to be more easily viewed, physicians must connect their EHRs to other systems to receive the most benefit.
“Recently, there has been a big push in the federal government to automate health care with the hopes of improving both the quality and efficiency of care,” says Ben Stein, M.D., President and CEO of LIPIX. “Most of that push has been focused on the implementation of EHRs; however, EHRs by themselves provide relatively little value. If a physician’s system is not interoperable and not integrated into the bigger picture, significant quality and efficiency benefits will not be realized.
There are many emerging examples of clinical systems integration within health care, including e-prescribing, the ability to order laboratory tests online, and the electronic transmission of referrals. The term “health information exchange” encompasses all of these and more, says Mark Greaker, Vice President of Infrastructure and Operations at LIPIX.
“Previously, hospitals had to build expensive and proprietary point-to-point interfaces in order to share clinical information between information systems,” Greaker says. “Health information exchange represents the next generation of health care. Via a ‘hub and spoke,’ or networked, model, it allows care-providing organizations (CPOs) to more cost effectively provide clinicians with necessary information at their fingertips.”
“Recently, a lot of discussion has centered around turning information into knowledge,” says Becker. “The more knowledge we can make available to providers, the better. By participating in health information exchange, physicians make faster and more informed decisions. More specifically, health information exchange can improve care by reducing unnecessary admissions, medical errors and duplicate testing. Overall, a RHIO helps reduce health care costs, enhance care and save time for both clinicians and patients.”
Available Services
LIPIX provides physicians with a wide variety of services to help them enhance their practices’ efficiency and connectivity. These include a clinical viewer, secure messaging, medication management, events notification, results distribution and consulting on the attainment of “meaningful use” incentive payments.
“The services provided through LIPIX are designed to serve two essential purposes,” says Dr. Stein. “First of all, they serve to improve the quality of care that patients receive. Secondly, they serve to facilitate clinicians’ abilities to do their jobs more effectively and efficiently.
LIPIX Clinical Viewer
The LIPIX Clinical Viewer is LIPIX’s core service. It consists of a Web-based physician portal application that allows physicians to log in and search for information about patients whom they are treating. Information from community providers connected to the LIPIX network is readily available. The LIPIX Clinical Viewer utilizes the latest in encryption technology and has a view-only capability that leverages patients’ consent selections, so patients can rest assured that their information is kept private and secure and is only shared according to their wishes.
“The key benefit of the LIPIX Clinical Viewer is that physicians have access to patient information anytime, anywhere,” says Becker. “This immediate access to patients’ clinical information enables physicians to make more informed treatment and diagnostic decisions.”
Secure Messaging
“Secure messaging is a wonderful new technology that provides doctor-to-doctor direct communication through an e-mail-like paradigm,” says Greaker. “Previously, physicians had to write information requests or referrals by hand and fax or mail it to their colleagues. Now, they can have secure, direct electronic communication.”
The LIPIX Secure Messaging System has three distinctive features:
- HIPAA compliance — Secure messaging provides a secure, HIPAA-compliant method of clinician-to-clinician communication.
- A template-based approach — Secure messaging utilizes templates so that information, such as a patient summary report, is more easily displayed, interpreted and utilized. Decision support capabilities are layered into the messages and display alerts or reminders about specific, important pieces of information.
- Pre-population of data from the network of community providers — Secure messaging connects to the LIPIX RHIO and facilitates easy pre-population of data into the template message system. This ensures that clinicians do not have to take additional time to manually enter data before sending it to their colleagues.
“The LIPIX Secure Messaging System was developed to leverage the power of the RHIO and the power of a patient-centric approach to accessing data,” says Becker. “While it is very similar to an e-mail conversation, it provides a secure forum for communication between physicians.”
Secure messaging is an ideal medium for communicating referrals, consultation requests, patient transfer between health care facilities, patient admission to the emergency department, admission for inpatient care and patient follow-up information.
Rapid Delivery of Test Results
The LIPIX RHIO transmits data in real time, so physicians can be notified of test results as soon as they become available. Using LIPIX’s Results Distribution service, physicians can subscribe to receive test results as soon as the results are available within the LIPIX system. Physicians can also choose to have the results delivered through a secure fax or electronic message, or directly to the EHR.
“If a patient is suffering from a coagulation disorder, for example, and is on blood-thinners, the treating physician can receive immediate access to the results of the patient’s blood work as soon as they are available if he or she is using a laboratory that is connected to the LIPIX network,” says Becker. “That physician is then able to reach out to the patient and adjust his or her medication regimen, if needed. Being able to get information to clinicians in the midst of their busy schedules provides the opportunity to alter a course of treatment for a specific patient hours or days earlier.”
Results are transmitted through secure communications, and physicians must log in to the system using a two-factor authentication system to ensure patient information remains safe.
Making EHR Implementation Easier
LIPIX has partnered with the New York eHealth Collaborative and its Regional Extension Center program — a federally funded initiative — to provide physicians with meaningful use consultation services. LIPIX staff works with its members and their credentialed and affiliated physicians to facilitate EHR implementation in ambulatory physician practices. Staff members also work with physicians to ensure they have met the required objectives to qualify for meaningful use.
“By leveraging our expertise and using specific tools at our disposal, we are able to help practices redesign their workflow and provide necessary training and support to ensure that practices are in line to meet meaningful use requirements,” says Becker.