Health IT

Surescripts: Make interoperability about patient, not physician

In an interview, Surescripts CEO Tom Skelton suggested a shift in focus when it comes to interoperability

 

Judging from the tone of the federal government’s newly released interoperability roadmap, we are still a long way from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology’s 2004 vision of a secure, nationwide, patient-centric, interoperable system of electronic health records.

Tom Skelton, CEO of health IT connectivity network Surescripts, is looking to conquer the mountain with a series of specific, incremental climbs, but he still has his eyes on perhaps the most difficult step: putting the patient in the middle of the discussion.

In an interview at his company’s annual customer forum in Alexandria, Virginia, Skelton suggested a shift in focus when it comes to data movement. “Perhaps we should be asking, ‘What do we know about the patient?’ rather than, ‘What does the physician know?'” he said.

That is the one of the drivers behind the National Record Locator Service, a program Surescripts launched in April with EHR vendors eClinicalWorks, Epic Systems and Greenway Health, along with CVS Health. In the absence of a national patient ID, record location represents the only real hope for positively identifying patients when sending electronic health data between organizations.

Pilots of the National Record Locator Service are just getting underway, so Skelton said it is too early to assess the program. But he did discuss earlier Surescripts connectivity efforts.

Surescripts has its roots in e-prescribing. Its “first act,” according to Skelton, was to bolster the nation’s e-prescribing infrastructure, something that has been mostly successful; as of April 2014, 70 percent of U.S. physicians were writing electronic scripts with an EHR, according to an ONC analysis of Surescripts data, up from just 7 percent when Congress authorized a Medicare incentive program in December 2008.

Act 2, Skelton said, was an expansion to broader clinical interoperability. “It was well intentioned,” he said. “I don’t think we timed the market right,” said Skelton, who joined Surescripts a little more than a year ago, after that expansion was well underway.

The current, third act involves two parts: optimizing e-prescribing, such as through promoting its use for controlled substances, and the exploration of various use cases, including the record locator service. “Clinical messaging is just full of potential,” Skelton said.

Messaging, he said, can “open a lot of doors” for population health improvement.

Note: Neil Versel appeared on a panel at Surescripts Customer Forum 2015 on Wednesday. Surescripts paid his travel expenses, but Versel was not compensated for his appearance.

Photo: Flickr user Tsahi Levent-Levi

 

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