Five Boulder County Organizations Sign Agreements With CORHIO to Share Patient Data Through Health Information Exchange

BOULDER, Colo., April 4, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Five Boulder County health care organizations have signed agreements to share patient data through the Colorado Regional Health Information Organization's (CORHIO) Health Information Exchange (HIE), CORHIO officials announced today.

The organizations include Alpine Urology, Boulder Community Hospital, Gastroenterology of the Rockies, Longmont United Hospital and Spruce Street Internal Medicine.

Within this group of four providers, Boulder Community Hospital has the distinction of being the first health care provider organization in Colorado to "go live" on the HIE that serves the Front Range and Eastern Plains of Colorado.

"Boulder Community Hospital is very excited to be the first hospital in Colorado to begin sending patient data to CORHIO," said Dr. Valerie Lipetz, chief medical officer for the hospital's affiliated physician clinics. "We will soon be joined by hospitals and physicians around the state who are working cooperatively to provide Colorado citizens with safer and more cost-effective patient care through our statewide Health Information Exchange."

When completely built out, the HIE will allow health care providers across Colorado's Front Range and Eastern Plains to more quickly and easily exchange patient data than previously used, paper-based methods. HIE uses a highly sophisticated, secure process to electronically exchange data through electronic health record (EHR) systems. Compared to faxing and mailing information, patients will receive higher quality care without delays that sometimes stretched to several weeks.

Through use of CORHIO's network, physicians and other medical care providers will have access to important health information about their patients including lab test and pathology results, x-ray, MRI and other imaging reports, and physician transcription reports. Later this summer the network will be upgraded to include patient medication lists, allergies and immunizations.

The data available to medical professionals about each patient in the network will grow each time they visit their physician and additional information is recorded electronically.

About CORHIO

CORHIO is dedicated to improving health care quality for all Coloradans through health information exchange (HIE). As the state designated entity for HIE, CORHIO collaborates with health care stakeholders including physicians, hospitals, clinics, public health, long-term care, laboratories, health plans and patients to develop secure systems and processes for sharing clinical information. CO-REC, a CORHIO initiative, assists primary care providers in adopting, implementing and becoming meaningful users of electronic health record (EHR) systems. CORHIO is a not-for-profit supported by grants, including awards from the Colorado Health Foundation and from federal ARRA HITECH funds. For more information about CORHIO, please visit www.corhio.org.

SOURCE CORHIO