In a significant step toward accelerating the adoption of electronic health records, Verizon Business has launched an information technology platform that enables the digital sharing of physician-dictated patient notes.
The Verizon Medical Data Exchange, launched Wednesday (March 3) at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society annual conference in Atlanta, provides a way for medical transcriptionists to share digitized patient notes detailing patients' care and treatment with doctors, hospitals and other health care providers. Until now, the lack of an interoperable, nationally available platform has made it difficult to share these notes, which primarily form the basis of electronic health records.
Verizon Business developed the platform for the Medical Transcription Service Consortium under an agreement announced last November. (See related news release.) Founding consortium members MD-IT and MedQuist currently are using the platform. By August, when the Medical Data Exchange is expected to be in use by all of the consortium's members, 350,000-plus physicians, more than 2,700 clinics and nearly 2,500 hospitals will be supported.
The Medical Transcription Industry Association estimates that its members create and electronically archive nearly 60 percent of the more than 1.2 billion clinical notes produced in the U.S. each year. Approximately 25 percent of these records currently are shared among health care providers, including other physicians, hospitals and insurance companies.
"Pervasive sharing of patient information can save lives, but complex challenges have stood in the way of health IT solutions," said Peter Tippett, vice president, security solutions and enterprise innovation for Verizon Business.
"The Verizon Medical Data Exchange provides a means to accelerate the sharing of a wide range of digital health information between physicians and health care organizations. Digital record sharing among the entire health information ecosystem can help speed patient diagnoses while enabling health care organizations to operate more efficiently and cost-effectively," Tippett said.
Medical Data Exchange Delivers Simplicity
Designed to meet the requirements of the Nationwide Health Information Network, the Verizon Medical Data Exchange delivers an interoperable platform that enables medical transcription firms to maintain their current IT systems, processes and workflows. The Nationwide Health Information Network, overseen by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, is a collection of standards, protocols, legal agreements, specifications and services designed to promote the development of a national infrastructure to support the secure exchange of health information over the Internet.