Monday, February 14th 2005
Kryptiq Clinical Messaging Integrated with Electronic Health Records Saves Healthcare Industry $10.37 per Referral
e-Referral Study Validates Business Case and Usability for Community Adoption of New Cost-Effective and Efficient Information Sharing Model
PORTLAND, Ore — February 14, 2005 — In a study released today evaluating the cost savings realized through the use of electronic referrals, Providence Health System, ranked second among the nation's top 100 integrated health networks in 2004, revealed an estimated savings of $4.97 for each referral; The Oregon Clinic, an independent 90-physician affiliated specialty clinic, collaborated with Providence in the study and revealed its own estimated savings of $5.40 per referral, leading to combined savings of $10.37 per referral. Both organizations used the Kryptiq ClinicalMessenger™ solution, to enable electronic communications of structured patient information among multiple, independent care facilities using separate electronic health record (EHR) systems. The early success of the program has accelerated a system wide rollout at Providence in Oregon to connect additional internal physician groups and as many as 50 specialty practices. Kryptiq will release details of the e-Referral study today at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) conference in Dallas, Texas.
According to the National Center for Health Statistics 2002 Ambulatory Care Survey, 7.3 percent of all patient visits in the U.S resulted in a referral, totaling 65,323,000. A recent study by the Center for Information Technology Leadership (CITL) at Partners HealthCare reported that if all information exchange between physician, hospitals, pharmacies, radiology centers, and public health facilities were fully automated in a standardized way, the U.S. health care system could save $77.8 billion dollars each year. “We found system interoperability critical to realizing the full financial benefits of IT investment,” said Blackford Middleton, M.D., chairman of CITL. “The findings of the Providence/Oregon Clinic study are consistent with the research findings of our report,” added Middleton. Additional members of the CITL expert panel include Dr. David Brailer, national health information technology coordinator, Dr. J. Marc Overhage, president and CEO if the Indiana Health Information Exchange, and Scott Young, director for health information technology at Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
In the metropolitan area of Portland, Oregon, alone, Providence Medical Group, an employed group of approximately 100 primary care physicians, makes approximately 250 patient referrals each day to independent specialty groups, including The Oregon Clinic. Both Providence’s network and The Oregon Clinic use the GE Healthcare Centricity® Physician Office Electronic Medical Record.
“When we began using the system in 1996, we were able to virtually eliminate all paper charts,” said Mike Reagin, director of research and development, Information Services Group, Providence Health System. “However, when patients are referred by primary care physicians to an outside specialist, their charts and other medical records must still be printed out and faxed to the specialty clinic, even if that clinic also uses an EHR system.”
In 2004, Providence implemented Kryptiq’s ClinicalMessenger and began the e-Referral study at the Providence Medical Group in cooperation with The Oregon Clinic. The study was designed to test the use of electronic referrals to securely transmit structured patient data between the organizations using the existing email and Internet infrastructure. “Before the study, physicians would fill out and print a referral form, fax it to us, and we would scan it into our electronic health record system. The same went for clinical information about patients,” said Dr. Louis Libby, a pulmonary specialist and a vice president at The Oregon Clinic. “Now patient information is all sent using clinical messaging, without paper, and is automatically loaded into our electronic medical record system.”
Kryptiq’s ClinicalMessenger added secure messaging functionality inside GE Healthcare’s EMR application so that patient information could be shared directly and securely externally to the practices. In addition to enabling structured communications between Providence and The Oregon Clinic, the Kryptiq solution allows these organizations to share patient information from their EHR with paper-based practices and with patients who have access to email. Integration of messaging directly with the EHR proved critical to usability and acceptance of the electronic referral process, allowing a streamlined workflow that dramatically reduced the time required to transfer patient information between EHR systems at the collaborating organizations from up to two weeks to just minutes.
Providence Health System conducted a rigorous cost analysis to determine its estimated savings of $4.97 per referral after evaluating all costs associated with paper handling, scanning, manual data entry, courier services, and document archival and destruction. Combined with estimated savings at The Oregon Clinic of $5.40 per referral based on similar factors, the use of clinical messaging integrated with EHR systems for electronic referrals represents a potential industry savings of $10.37 per referral. Adding this functionality to EHR systems will increase the financial value to healthcare organizations and enable the interconnection of clinicians, a key goal of Dr. Brailer’s strategic framework outlined in the “Decade of Healthcare IT” report that supports President Bush’s aim to gain widespread adoption of interoperable electronic medical record systems by 2014.
With the success of this study, Providence has accelerated their implementation plan. “Rolling out the e-Referral network on a large scale will have a big impact on Providence as a business,” said Reagin. “It’s fundamentally altered our strategy moving forward for how we want to do businesses with our affiliates because we recognize that this is efficient and will enable us as an organization to communicate securely.”
About Kryptiq Corporation
Kryptiq is the leading provider of interoperability and workflow connectivity solutions for healthcare. Kryptiq streamlines healthcare communications among patients, providers, pharmacies and payers with secure messaging, electronic prescribing, disease management, and contract management technologies. By integrating these solutions with existing systems and applications, Kryptiq enables the trusted transport of health information where and when it is needed. Kryptiq’s fast-growing customer base includes many of the nation's top 100 integrated health networks, spans 44 states plus Washington, D.C., and includes well-known providers and payers such as Providence Health System, Capital Region Healthcare, MeritCare Health System, Eastern Maine Healthcare, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, andNorthwest Permanente. For more information on the company, visit http://www.kryptiq.com/.
About CITL
The Center for Information Technology Leadership is a not-for-profit research organization based at Partners HealthCare in Boston. Using a rigorous analytic approach, CITL assesses clinical information technologies and disseminates its findings to help providers maximize the value of their IT investments, help technology firms better understand the value proposition of their healthcare products, and inform national healthcare IT policy discussions. Chartered by Partners HealthCare, CITL is supported by a strategic alliance with HIMSS, by research grants, and by corporate sponsorships.
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For more information, press only:
Lisa MacKenzie
MacKenzie Marketing Group
lisam@mackenzie-marketing.com
(503) 225-0725
