SandlotConnect attains 1.5 million patient records to provide HIE in Texas

Sandlot, LLC, a healthcare IT solutions company founded by practicing physicians who have pursued a better way to collectively share clinical information, announced that its comprehensive health information exchange (HIE) SandlotConnect® now contains more than 1.5 million patient records, allowing providers to access and contribute to the largest HIE in Texas.

More than 1,500 care providers exchange information in SandlotConnect®, including 375 physicians and their staff who update the exchange with more than 50,000 patient records daily. SandlotConnect® enables providers to meaningfully use electronic health records, a requirement for American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) incentive payments.

"The ability to provide this scale of connectivity between providers and their patients' records anywhere in the system is truly a milestone," said Telly Shackelford, CEO at Sandlot. "This demonstrates that doctors trust our exchange and know they can rely on SandlotConnect® to easily store, retrieve and share patient data."

SandlotConnect® is interoperable with:

• 7 Texas hospitals
• 2 national laboratories
• 2 major radiology groups
• 3 electronic health record (EHR) systems
• 2 E-prescribing products

"Physicians must have access to relevant clinical information at any time at any site of care to improve the quality of healthcare," said Dr. Thomas M. Deas, Jr., chief medical officer at Sandlot and a practicing gastroenterologist. "We have achieved this goal in a very short time because of the accessibility, ease of use and early adoption of SandlotConnect.®"

SandlotConnect® providers receive and exchange clinical information directly through their EHR systems.  However, an EHR is not required to access patient records in SandlotConnect®'s secure web portal.

"We have worked closely with our physicians to determine their priorities and incorporate them into SandlotConnect® to facilitate the best possible patient care," Shackelford said.

HIEs enable the electronic sharing of important medical information among physicians, hospitals, emergency rooms, clinics and other sites of care. By facilitating access to clinical data, HIEs help physicians provide safe and timely patient care. They also improve efficiency by avoiding the wasted time and resources spent retrieving paper records and performing duplicate tests.  Exchanges also allow public health authorities to analyze population data to improve community health.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, recently signed into law by President Obama, created $20 billion in incentives to encourage adoption of health information technology. ARRA includes $17.2 billion in payments through the Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement systems to reward healthcare providers who demonstrate meaningful use of certified electronic health records. These requirements include exchanging information between different electronic health records systems by using a health information exchange such as SandlotConnect.®