MSCHIE launches Phase 2 of HIE deployment

The Mississippi Coastal Health Information Exchange (MSCHIE) has launched Phase 2 of its HIE deployment - which will expand its services to four additional health systems, launch a community outreach training program, and integrate with additional EHR vendors throughout the community - marking a major milestone in its efforts to improve patient care coordination and clinical outcomes in the Mississippi counties hit hardest by Hurricane Katrina.

“We are pleased to work with the MSCHIE to not only rebuild the area's health IT infrastructure but also to make an unprecedented level of care collaboration possible throughout the community”

The inaugural MSCHIE participants - Memorial Hospital at Gulfport, Singing River Health System, including Singing River Hospital and Ocean Springs Hospital, and Coastal Family Health Center, a federally qualified health center representing multiple clinics - will be joined by four additional health systems. This expansion extends a diverse functionality set, powered by Medicity's health information exchange technology, to the new participants.

MSCHIE currently enables physicians to access longitudinal patient records that include outpatient medication history, ADT data, laboratory results, transcribed reports, and discharge summaries. Important for a community where a significant percentage of patients use Medicaid, medication histories in the MSCHIE system include Medicaid data.

"By exchanging health information across hospitals and clinics in six counties, we are empowering our providers to make better, timelier and safer treatment decisions at the point of care - and we're making it easier for them to demonstrate meaningful use of electronic health records under ARRA," explained James S. McIlwain, M.D., president and CEO of Information & Quality Healthcare (IQH) and Task Force Grant Administrator for the MSCHIE.

"As additional participants join the MSCHIE, we are positioned to more effectively and efficiently care for patients in the area and handle any future emergencies," McIlwain added.

To increase the value of MSCHIE throughout the community, Phase 2 will include an aggressive outreach training campaign targeting clinics associated with participating hospitals and other providers in the community. MSCHIE will also integrate with eMDs and Allscripts EHRs as part of Phase 2.

MSCHIE employs Medicity technology to aggregate and stage community data from across disparate systems and care locations, perform patient-matching, create longitudinal patient records and make them accessible to providers, and integrate with EHR systems in the community. Dell Perot Systems provides data center services for the exchange.

"We are pleased to work with the MSCHIE to not only rebuild the area's health IT infrastructure but also to make an unprecedented level of care collaboration possible throughout the community," said Kipp Lassetter, M.D., CEO of Medicity.

The state of Mississippi has focused on implementing information technologies to ensure quality and continuity of care for its citizens since 2005 when Hurricane Katrina demonstrated to officials the difficulty of treating patients effectively and efficiently when paper records are destroyed and comprehensive health information is inaccessible.