"The Ronan Report" provides insight about the activities at the Western Maryland Health System in Cumberland, Maryland, and about the changes taking place in healthcare today from a CEO's perspective.

Monday, May 23, 2011

CRISP

In an effort to improve the care that we deliver to patients, WMHS is part of the Chesapeake Regional Information System for our Patients (CRISP).  This is a statewide health information exchange that shares health information among hospitals, labs, physician offices and other health entities.
The CRISP health information exchange will allow physicians and caregivers to have access to a patient's medical history across Maryland.  We started exchanging data with CRISP earlier this month.  Protecting patient information is a priority for CRISP, but patients can opt out of the health information exchange if they prefer.  Exchanging health information was a long time in coming, but it is great that it is now here.

1 comment:

  1. While I believe this is a step in the right direction, RECs will ultimately fall short of their true goal. If EMRs are not interoperable over all systems. True benefits (ie reducing adverse drug events from CPOE systems) will not be realized unless all medical records are utilized from the patient's history.

    A common EMR such as VISTA from the VA is the ideal situation. A REC can only do so much to encourage the use of EMRs and sharing of information but they cannot create an environment of interoperability while avoiding conflict of interests.

    In the end, I fear it will only cost the Federal Government more in the long run to fix the holes in the system.

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