Once fully up and running, the Massachusetts Health Information Exchange will help doctors avoid dangerous drug interactions and redundant tests that now plague the health-care system, a Baystate executive said.
SPRINGFIELD – With the press of a button, Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston transferred Gov. Deval L. Patrick’s medical records to Baystate Medical Center here Tuesday morning, the first step in what doctors hope will be a statewide network of medical records sharing.
Once fully up and running, the Massachusetts Health Information Exchange will help doctors avoid dangerous drug interactions and redundant tests that now plague the health-care system, said Dr. Evan M. Benjamin, Baystate’s senior vice president for health care quality.
Benjamin said a Baystate-led system linking doctors' offices and hospitals all over the Pioneer Valley will be up and running about a year from now. The state system, which debuted with Tuesday’s demonstration, will take longer to roll out.
An easy system of information sharing will also spare patients from having to explain every detail of their care and answer the same tedious questions for every doctor they see, said Joel L. Vengco, Baystate’s vice president and chief information officer.
Baystate and other hospitals have been keeping electronic records for years, Vengco said. But transferring those records is much more complicated than sending an email. There is a lot of data. There are privacy concerns, and different doctors and hospitals often have computer systems that are not compatible.
Vengco said another obstacle is a cultural reluctance on the part of doctors and nurses to share patient information.
“Quite honestly, it has just been a clinical culture that sharing of information is not acceptable,” Vengco said.
State Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. JudyAnn Bigby acknowledged that health-care consumers are frustrated. After all, banks share this type of information every time someone uses an ATM.
“Health information is much more complicated than that,” she said. “There are much more pieces of data.”
Vengco said the end result is that patient files were printed out and faxed to the next hospital. Or patents were lugging physical printed copies of their records, including laboratory reports and X-rays in huge binders.
“That happens all the time,” Benjamin said.
A current push toward more integrated care makes records sharing much more important, Benjamin said. Imagine doctors knowing a diabetic never filled a prescription, then being able to follow up with that patient to find out why.
“It would make sure more people are compliant with their doctor’s instructions,” he said. “It would help provide that continuum of care.”
In August, the federal government granted $16.9 million tot he state to support the medical-records sharing plant.
Vengco said Baystate is due to get $30,000 to $40,000 of that $16.9 million for its expenses related to the file sharing.