HealthUnity™ RegHIN™ Health Information Network (HU-RHIN) is a suite of products that lets disparate healthcare entities such as outpatient clinics, hospitals, labs and radiology practices to engage in clinical collaboration in the context of patient treatment. The HU-RHIN allows each entity in the network to engage in bidirectional, message-oriented collaboration using the latest in web services technology.

Any health information network must adhere to a high level of security and privacy rules when handling confidential patient information. We have given careful consideration to privacy and security guidelines laid down by HIPAA. Role-based security, user authentication, data encryption using Public Key Cryptographic Services (PKCS), access control rules, opt-in/opt-out settings, audit log capability and many more features are provided out of the box.

The HealthUnity RHIN approach is comprehensive. We provide the products needed for building the RHIN including adapters for existing applications. We also provide the legal framework including the complete set of contracts for making this a reality. Combine this with a strong professional services and support offerings and partners who offer solutions and you have the best solution in the market for initiating, building, growing and sustaining RHINs that have no parallel.

The Regional Health Information Network provides the ability for different entities such as Hospitals, Emergency Departments, Physician Practices, Labs and Radiology Centers to connect to one another over a secure network and exchange clinical information electronically. The need for such a network has been realized for many years now and there are various national, state-wide and regional efforts underway. It will help for us to summarize the problems addressed by RHINs.

Inefficiencies leading to higher costs in today’s model

• Collaboration happens today via snail mail, faxing and other manual means. These operations take up valuable time and are inherently labor intensive. They are also not necessarily secure and address HIPAA privacy concerns
• One option is to build a web portal solution. However, multiple portals (where available) enable viewing of information, but do not provide a method to import and incorporate them into local systems.
• EMR systems by themselves do not solve all of the communication and collaboration problems that physicians are facing. They still have to build multiple point-to-point interfaces to external systems.
• Proliferation of point to point interfaces increases costs involved in integrating systems in an exponential manner. These point to point interfaces are also very difficult to manage and support.
• Non availability of prior treatment information increases possibility of repeated tests and procedures. Many insurance carriers reject claims arising from such repeated tests. With pay for performance already taking shape, those organizations that address these issues proactively will be far more ready to face the newly emerging scenario.
• Physician practices face a high barrier to adopt electronic medical record systems because those systems do not integrate with other systems other than thru expensive point to point interfaces.

Quality of Care Issues

• Patient clinical information is typically locked away in multiple silos. Critical information available in one location may never be known to another provider. Patients may not know enough to be able to convey this information intelligently themselves.
• There is typically a longer turn around time for fulfilling requests for historical lab / radiology results as well as hospital discharge information when using non-electronic means. A critical report could take days to reach the physician that requested it.
• Non integration of clinical information such as medications from other providers lead to reduced chances of detecting drug to drug as well as drug-allergy interactions.

Patient Experience

• Patient experience suffers as a result of the lack of information which could be leveraged to streamline operations and improve quality of care. Patient’s confidence in the system often gets diminished when they see their information is not being electronically communicated.
• Patient may be required to fill out the same, time-consuming information at multiple entities within the same region or in many cases within the same facility.

The HealthUnity™ solution provides at the core, a set of software and services that enable secure connectivity between participating providers. The network is built on standards which enable multiple parties to collaborate without having to build non-standard interfaces. It is also built with stringent privacy policies in place which enable tight control over both publishing as well as receiving information by involved parties.

The HealthUnity™ network consists of an ever-increasing set of services delivered on the network, which progressively takes the bar of connected collaboration to a new level. The HealthUnity™ solution addresses and resolves the problem areas discussed above.

For practices that use an electronic system for maintaining clinical information, HealthUnity provides the required set of adapters which allows bidirectional transfer of clinical information to other trusted providers. For physicians and practices that do not use electronic records, HealthUnity enables connectivity to the regional network through a client application that provides them with a pathway to adopting more sophisticated electronic systems in the future.

The HealthUnity™ network enables clinical information providers such as labs as well as radiology centers to automate the delivery of the results generated to physicians. The RHIN provides the ability for them to incorporate the results into their respective backend systems. This alleviates the need to build point to point integration technologies with each system.

Our approach is radical yet simple. The HealthUnity solution begins with planning the network. We offer a pre-packaged plan that can be customized in a short period of time – this includes a complete legal framework for data sharing. Once this plan is done and signed off by the RHIN initiating organization, it takes us under a day to configure the product to provide the network services to operate a RHIN. Each member entity that joins this network can do so with a standardized implementation plan with predictable results at a predictable cost. The workflows across the RHIN are all standardized and readily available. Here are some of those workflows: Demographics exchange; secure messaging; ED data – medications history, problems list, allergies, and immunizations; electronic referrals; results delivery (lab, radiology); inpatient progress notes and discharge summaries etc. These workflows are easily deployable on the RHIN.

The HealthUnity solution delivers extraordinary value to the following participants.

Hospitals

• Reduce costs and increase speed by disseminating information such as discharge summaries electronically to other providers who care for common patients
• Increase utilization of the technology by “pushing” machine readable information to your community of physicians rather than they having to come and log in to your web portal
• Improve the quality of care of your patients by contributing your portion of data to the longitudinal clinical record of the patient
• Provide better experience to staff physicians by extending access to hospital-generated information to their own practices. Also, access to their clinic data is available while they are in rounds at your hospital
• Improve patient experience and turn around times by leveraging relevant information retrieved from the network. Your patients will love the experience they get at your facilities
• Reduce your cost of technology by building a point to multi point solution rather than a “one-off” point to point integration solution
• For a low up front investment you will be able to try a regional network approach to data sharing. Build incrementally from those early successes

Physician Practices

• Improve efficiency and save costs by adopting electronic collaboration methods for performing referrals, consults, etc
• Receive lab / radiology results, Hospital discharge summaries and other clinical documents soon after they are generated, avoiding lengthy delays and labor
• Improve quality of care by leveraging instantly available clinical history from the network
• Improve patient experience by leveraging relevant information readily available in the network
• Incorporate electronic data into patient records without complex manual processes
• Begin to see the true value that your investment in EMRs and PMS can bring by securely connecting to the network and accessing key data sources

Emergency Departments

• Improve quality of care by leveraging critical clinical information such as medications history, problems list and allergies information from the entire network
• Reduce treatment delays and costly paper chasing by accessing clinical as well as lab/radiology test results from the network. Also avoiding duplication of tests will mean that your reimbursements will be higher and there are less collection issues
• Efficiently and electronically distribute ED notes to those providers who provide follow on care after the ED episode is completed

Labs and Radiology Centers

• Increase efficiency and reduce costs by electronically distributing result information to ordering physicians
• Improve customer experience by ensuring result information is made available to ordering physicians as soon as it is generated
• Reduce the probability of double specimen draws or repeat patient inconveniencing (e.g. pre-exam dietary restrictions, administration of barium etc) by electronically fulfilling requests for past study findings
• Reduce the risk of rejection of insurance claims because of a test that was repeated

Patients

• Streamlined experience at practices both at check-in, referral, treatment, follow on care…
• Physicians gain access to key clinical documents without patients having to carry around those documents and exposing those key clinical documents to potential theft, misplacement etc
• Patients will benefit by improving quality of care improvements