In an expansion that now covers 140 million patients and more than 2 billion patient visits, Surescripts says providers in eight health systems are the most recent to go live with its National Record Locator Service.
The NRLS, which operates under the Carequality legal and technical frameworks, offers another approach to cross-system interoperability, allowing data sharing across connected technology platforms and networks nationwide.
It gives providers that connectivity within their existing EHR workflows – helping them identify and share patient records across geographies and among disparate technology vendors.
[Also: Surescripts gives EHR vendors access to its record locator service, Epic and others sign up]
After just two months using the record locator service, for instance, "We've already exchanged more than 82,000 patient records through the service, enabling our physicians to have a more complete care history of their patients regardless of where they were treated," said Lewis Low, MD, chief medical officer at Portland, Oregon-based Legacy Health, in a Surescripts statement.
In addition to Legacy Health, which has seven hospitals and more than four dozen clinics across the Pacific Northwest, parts of seven other health systems have recently joined the NRLS:
- Cedars-Sinai. 886 licensed beds, 2,100 physicians, 2,800 nurses of its network in the Greater Los Angeles area;
- Contra Costa Health Services. One hospital and 11 health centers in its integrated system of healthcare services, community health improvement and environmental protection in Contra Costa County, California;
- NorthShore University HealthSystem. 2,100 providers in four hospitals and 130 offices in the Chicago area;
- Novant Health. 1,380 providers in 530 locations across North Carolina, Virginia, South Carolina and Georgia;
- Parkview Health. Eight hospitals and several specialty outpatient facilities in northeast Indiana, as well as more than 220 physicians' offices in Indiana and Ohio;
- Sansum Clinic. 200 physicians serving California's central coast, and
- Sutter Health. 5,000 affiliated doctors and 27 hospitals serving more than 100 communities in Northern California.
Since the launch of the service in March 2016, Surescripts says it has answered almost 6.5 million requests for patient locations and returned over 1.6 million location of care summaries.
"Clinicians at these leading health systems can connect to our nationwide network and get critical patient information at the point of care," said Surescripts CEO Tom Skelton in a statement. "It's great to see these organizations take proactive steps to delivering better, safer care by becoming truly interoperable and sharing critical patient data."
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Email the writer: mike.miliard@himssmedia.com