Healthcare IT News - February 2009 - (Page 15) www.HealthcareITNews.com PhySIcIAN PRActIcES & AMBuLAtoRy cARE February 2009 ■ Healthcare IT News 15 SerMo Continued from page 1 oCHIN Continued from page 13 participating in the FluMonitor tracking will be paid a nominal fee for their participation, says Sharp. S ermo officials say the FluMonitor ’s ins tantaneous exchange of information could have broad implications, such as better preparedness in staffing and supply requirements, and earlier treatment. It could also inform clinical decision-making based on local disease prevalence, avoiding unnecessary and expensive testing, they said. Steve Gordon, MD, a family practitioner in Sioux City, Iowa, joined the Sermo FluMonitor program a couple months ago. He has yet to report a case for this year, although he expects that cases will increase in the coming months. “Knowing how this yearly epidemic progresses is very important knowledge,” Gordon says. “I wanted to get in with the FluMonitor because I knew it wouldn’t cost me much energy and time and it is important public health knowledge.” In the event that a patient comes in with the flu, Gordon says he could just go to the Sermo site and click on the FluMonitor screen and enter the data required. He says this would take approximately 15-20 seconds. Patient information that would be entered into the FluMonitor would be patient age, gender, whether they were bedside tested or vaccinated, and their symptoms, says Sharp. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention currently distributes information 10-14 Adam Sharp, MD days after laboratory-confirmed diagnoses. “Two days is too late with Influenza because we’re working with, roughly, a 40-hour window of opportunity,” said Gary Munk, director of clinical virology at Hackensack University Medical Center. “If you can catch it in under that, you can interfere with the virus by offering prevention methods to minimize disease spread in the area. We could not only treat influenza, but potentially prevent it.” “We are not trying to replace the CDC but want to augment it, separate the signals from the noise so to speak,” says Sharp. “We are taking information from the community and are overlaying it with what the CDC does to get ahead of the curve.” Sermo will share the data they glean with anyone that is interested, Sharp says. Sermo officials said in the future, the technology would be used to track various diseases, including Tuberculosis, Staphylococcus, HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. ■ More at HealthcareITNews.com e Connect: SerMo 0209 “immensely benefited from its relationship with OCHIN.” She said otherwise the EMR would not have been financially viable for them. “We are very fortunate to be a part of it, added Amit Shah, MD, medical director of Multnomah County Health Department. “OCHIN is an example of how primary care is under a revolution,” he says. “We are trying to reform the safety net clinic. Using an EMR is a revolutionary way to create the medical home and serve the underinsured.” “People are always talking about interoperability and we will get there one day, but what we really gained was intra-operability,” said Shah. “We were able to talk to ourselves, to talk to Susan Chauvie support staff and track things for our patients.” “It has been really great to have “People have a lot of questions sites connected to each other,” added Abdellatif. “Our providers can have and a little bit of anxiety about being ready,” she says. “I work with professional sharing that them to make sure that they they didn’t have before.” feel as close to ready as posOCHIN is a designatsible.” “The real art, I think, ed Organized Health Care is building a relationship and Arrangement (OHCA) and trust and making sure that shares one set of hardware, you use a variety of ways to which enables all OCHIN communicate and invite clinics to share records across Abby Sears everyone to be a part of the change multiple organizations. Susan Chauvie, chief clinical offi- that is about to happen – before they cer of OCHIN, is working with each are in the middle of it,” she says. ■ organization to determine its clinical More at HealthcareITNews.com strategy as it prepares for its EMR. e ●Connect: oCHIN 0209 The merger of Allscripts and Misys has created the new Allscripts New Years Resolution: 2009 Will Be The Year I Automate My Practice Sound Familiar? Then it’s time to check out Allscripts. Find out why 150,000 physicians, 700 hospitals and thousands of other healthcare providers in clinics, post-acute care facilities and homecare agencies trust solutions from Allscripts to automate their clinical and business operations and Connect to Health™. 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