When Hurricane Katrina devastated the Mississippi Gulf Coast in August 2005, countless medical records were destroyed. No back-up system was in place for the majority of those files.

 

“The absence of detailed patient histories and medical records put the citizens of Mississippi at risk and created an information vacuum for physicians and nurses as they sought to provide high-quality healthcare in a variety of care settings across the state," said James S. McIlwain, MD, CEO of Information & Quality Healthcare (IQH), the Medicare quality improvement organization for Mississippi, and co-chair of the Mississippi Health Information Infrastructure Technology Task Force, which spearheaded the development of the Mississippi Coastal Health Information Exchange (MCHIE).

 

Made possible by a $3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, MCHIE is on track to go live by June 1, the beginning of hurricane season.

 

“So many health records had been lost on the coast,” said Chris Anderson, CEO of Singing River Health System in Pascagoula, which was especially hard hit by the storm. Thanks to a strong health information infrastructure in place, the system’s patient records were accessible following Katrina. “I know of two internists’ offices that were destroyed … and lost about 8,000 charts. If they’d been electronic, they would’ve been backed up.”

 

With McIlwain, Anderson co-chairs the task force, which Gov. Haley Barbour assembled in 2007 as a result of findings by the healthcare committee for the Governor’s Commission on Recovery, Rebuilding and Renewal. The healthcare committee, chaired by Anderson, identified electronic management of medical records as a top priority in the aftermath of the nation’s costliest natural disaster.

 

“Right now, if you’re a physician on our staff and you’re sitting in your office, you can look at lab results … and digital radiological images online,” said Anderson. “You can see anything in your office that you can see in our hospital. We don’t have a paper medical record anymore.”

 

The six coastal counties of Pearl River, Stone, George, Hancock, Harrison, and Jackson that endured the brunt of hurricane damage are the initial focus of the health information exchange, which is being introduced at Singing River’s 445-bed Memorial Hospital in Gulfport and Coastal Family Health Center in Biloxi.

 

 “At some point in the future, if you can demonstrate that it works on the coast, it makes a case for doing this in other parts of the state,” said McIIwain. 

 

Technology from Medicity, Inc., one of few Alpha Network Certification Process participants in the CCHIT certification process for health information exchanges (HIEs), provided MSCHIE with a secure interoperability platform, enabling clinicians to access community-based patient health records, clinical messaging and e-consultation, medical claims, medication history, and more.
Medicity delivers real-time clinical data exchange among all healthcare providers to improve patient outcomes and patient-provider relationships while reducing healthcare costs resulting from inefficiencies, medical errors and incomplete patient information.

 

The Medicity interoperability platform, community master patient index and electronic medical records (EMR) gateway facilitates the exchange of clinical data to and from EMRs, hospital information systems and ancillary systems such as lab, radiology, pathology, and transcription.
"After thoroughly evaluating half a dozen vendors, we chose Medicity because of its proven track record in successfully launching clinical data exchanges in Delaware and California," said McIlwain.

 

Medicity CEO Kipp Lassetter, MD, said the technology was developed to support the nation's healthcare goals of interconnecting clinicians and healthcare organizations, encouraging physician adoption of EMRs, personalizing care through online personal health records, and improving public health through
tracking and analysis of regional and national patient data trends.

 

"By sharing secure data on a daily basis, MSCHIE participants will enhance the overall continuity of care, reduce costs and ensure vital, up-to-date information is available to clinicians at the point-of-care," said Lassetter.

 

As MSCHIE was being tested, President Barack Obama revealed details of the multi-billion dollar stimulus package passed by Congress that provides $19 billion to modernize health information technology systems.

 

“Everybody in our industry understands how important this is,” said Anderson, emphasizing “they also understand how expensive it is.”

 

Rural hospitals operating on slim profit margins usually cannot afford the expense of moving medical records online.