Enhancing Communication Across the Health Care System
DC Regional Health Information Organization Fact Sheet — in English
DC Regional Health Information Organization Fact Sheet — en Español
Knowledge is power. Shared knowledge is the power to improve health and health care. Until recently, the health care system for those DCPCA serves was disjointed. Patients often had to hand-carry their records from one point of service to another. Each care experience required that providers “start over.” Continuity of care was lacking, and the risk of unnecessarily poorer health outcomes was much higher. The DC Regional Health Information Organization (DC RHIO) is a partnership between DCPCA, the DC government, and Microsoft. DC RHIO’s vision is a health system that improves care through access to shared patient clinical information. Already, 323,050 unique patient records, many from the District’s most underserved neighborhoods, are housed in the DC RHIO as of November 30, 2010. The total number of unique DC residents in the DC RHIO database now totals 149,288. The initiative is funded by a three-year, $6 million grant from the DC government.
Current DC RHIO partners include: Bread for the City, Family and Medical Counseling Service, Inc., La Clínica del Pueblo, Mary’s Center, So Others Might Eat (SOME), Whitman-Walker Health, and MedStar Health’s Georgetown University Hospital and Washington Hospital Center. The DC RHIO is supported by the Microsoft Amalga Unified Intelligence System, which enables the sharing of data among the community-based health centers and local hospitals that are part of this network.
The DC RHIO completed its first phase of implementation in April 2010 and is currently being used to support the delivery of health care at partner facilities. The second phase will expand connectivity to other providers, including hospitals, medical specialists, pharmacies, laboratories, and District governmental agencies, such as the Department of Health, the Department of Mental Health, and the Department of Health Care Finance. The expansion of the DC RHIO that is occurring now will include: Community of Hope, the George Washington University Hospital, Howard University Hospital, and Unity Health Care, Inc. As part of the second phase, DCPCA will transition to become the District of Columbia’s State Health Information Exchange.
Serving as the District’s Regional Extension Center, eHealthDC will support more than 1,000 health care providers with the adoption and meaningful use of electronic health records (e.g., for e-prescribing and clinical lab reports) to improve the quality of health care in DC and help eligible providers qualify for incentive payments from the federal government. In this role, DCPCA is partnering with Clinovations – a health information technology (HIT) consultancy – and both organizations will serve as a neutral source for credible EHR and HIT information. In addition, DCPCA will support health care providers with direct, individualized, and on-site technical assistance.
For more information, read the one-pager about our Health Information Technology Initiatives.
social
