Although the COVID-19 pandemic has shown us all the vulnerabilities of life, the disease has also undisputedly revealed the shortcomings of our American health system. Although our first-line healthcare providers have proven resilience, they still need a better and more simplified health information technology infrastructure to provide care for all patients today and in the future.

In this spirit, the new year tilts the exchange of medical information in an exciting direction, which is consistent with the transformation of medical staff from the practice of intermittent island care to the consideration of all patients’ needs.

As part of this transformation, the accelerated population care capabilities that many HIEs now provide enable providers to identify high-risk patients and high-risk populations who need care management resources the most.

The HIE data also identifies patients who frequently use unnecessary medical resources. If the problem is properly resolved, costs can be reduced and clinicians’ time can be allocated appropriately.

In order to help innovative medical service providers improve the health of the population, the Los Angeles Enhanced Services Network (LANES) is providing medical, behavioral and socioeconomic clinical data insights to narrow the data gap and better provide a basis for their decision-making.

Essentially, this data-rich service can be transformed in real time into structured, high-quality and complete patient information 24/7 critical access capabilities. Our area HIE generates actionable information in a dashboard view and has drill-down capabilities to identify gaps in the fragmented healthcare system.

Based on a strong technical infrastructure, LANES has made a huge leap in 2021 to simplify the delivery of healthcare in the entire LA County care system. We see the path to a better future, thanks to the involvement of the state and federal governments to promote interoperability. Facts have proved that the widespread use of HIE technology can control costs while improving the quality of care.

LANES is increasingly connected to the Los Angeles provider community

LANES praises its dedicated provider network, which provides treatment to 7.7 million unique patients in 32 hospitals and health systems and more than 500 community clinics and medical institutions

Our vision is to establish partnerships with medical institutions that support the Los Angeles communities we serve. We are grateful to the many providers who provide health data to LANES HIE, who use these data at the point of care to improve the prognosis of patients. Our clinical data repository has recorded 56 million ordered prescriptions, 200 million clinical results and 51 million patient documents.

Recognizing the value of relevant patient data, the need for data exchange in the Los Angeles medical community is a powerful driving force for our plan. With the active participation of providers, LANES continues to invest in tools that generate cross-community data insights within patients’ longitudinal records.

Medical staff are heroes

I never remember our country uniting and giving such generous compliments to healthcare professionals. Their courage, perseverance and self-sacrifice in caring for patients with COVID-19 deserve our greatest gratitude and support. Despite the hardships and health risks, millions of important frontline workers still appear at work every day. They are the true heroes of this health crisis.

The severity of this terrible disease has had a particularly serious impact on California. Los Angeles-the most populous county in the United States, with 10.4 million residents, representing more than 140 cultures, 224 languages ??and different income levels-continues to dominate the headlines of national hot spots.

Since 80% of LANES’ clinical data comes from the safety net population in Los Angeles, our participants can use the tool set to leverage our data assets to manage the populations considered most vulnerable to disease outbreaks such as the coronavirus pandemic.

In the context of the COVID-19 challenge, we are proud to play a role in helping our primary care providers deploy new solutions to care for patients who meet social isolation standards. In March 2020, LANES participant CSC Health implemented our HIE platform combined with telemedicine technology.

CSC Health previously relied on a “horse carriage system” to obtain patient paper medical records from local hospitals and physician offices. The request process requires outdated communication methods-mail, fax and telephone-sometimes repeated multiple times.

At the beginning of the pandemic, federally qualified health centers implemented LANES to retrieve hospital emergency rooms and hospitalization records online from participating providers, thereby significantly increasing the timely access rate by 75%.

Dr. Felix Aguilar, Chief Medical Officer of CSC Health, said: “Quick access to patient records during the COVID-19 pandemic has become more precious and medically necessary and urgent.” “The LANES platform provides quick access to community medical records, including comprehensive Snapshots of medical records. The clinical portal is well-designed and easy to use, which is very important in times of national crisis when clinicians need tools to give us immediate access. Real-time patient data.”

In order to further support frontline medical staff, LANES cooperated with state and county public health agencies and laboratory companies to collect and share COVID-19 laboratory test results, and soon provide immunization information.

LANES focuses on three key areas in 2021

Although traditionally, healthcare has lagged other industries in terms of digital adoption, we have observed that the pandemic has forced many healthcare provider participants to quickly transition to remote services and enable population healthcare functions. Please keep in mind that the following is our 2021 strategic roadmap for health information exchange, which is based on the following three key areas:

1. Acquisition of data assets

Abundant clinical and population health data have the potential to help change our regional medical ecosystem.

For LANES, access to our high-quality HIE data depends on whether our valuable public and private healthcare provider partners provide and share patient information. This year, as part of our vision, we will continue to build new participant partnerships to leverage our clinical data assets. Participants can access our dynamic data and technical services to support the flow of patient information throughout the Los Angeles healthcare field.

LANES clinical data assets can provide 360-degree insights into patients’ personal health information to help providers make informed care decisions, treatments and feasible interventions. Research has fully proven that the power of clinical information collected based on the patient’s medical history and the behavioral and social determinants of health factors can predict or diagnose diseases, thereby better managing disease outcomes.

The LANES technology infrastructure has always been the reason for the aggregation, standardization and delivery of high-quality data at the regional level, because most healthcare is delivered and used at the local level. We think this is a clear advantage over HIE in countries such as Common Hell and Carequality.

Our fragmented Los Angeles healthcare system needs a proven data aggregation solution to address inequalities and discontinuities in healthcare. One of the answers is to build a coordinated and interconnected care system through the value of accumulated HIE information.

2. Privacy and security

LANES is committed to building a strong and secure HIE organization and has implemented policies, procedures and practices to support this commitment in the past few years. With increasing data threats, protecting sensitive patient information is essential.

HITRUST CSF certification is the gold standard for global information security – or as our CISO likes to describe the certifiable framework: “HITRUST is HIPAA on steroids.”

LANES will continue to consult with HIPAA legal experts and our community privacy and security experts who serve on the LANES Privacy and Security Advisory Committee, and strive to study and maintain the complexity of patient consent. By establishing a solid data sharing agreement with our participants, you can ensure that data is allowed to be used.

We are committed to providing excellent customer service and responsible data management, winning the trust and confidence of participants.

3. Clinical use cases

Our clinical implementation team will work closely with physician leaders, care coordinators and other medical experts to develop result-based use cases.

We will evaluate the application of HIE technical services by provider participants in accordance with the first requirements of the final rules for CMS interoperability and patient access that will take effect in January 2021 to solve complex interoperability challenges. Our tools and services utilize FHIR standards and APIs to support our new CMS rules for provider meetings.

The team will study measurable improvements in health outcomes and KPIs that track clinical, operational, and business performance. We have also learned of many instances where LANES has played an important role in reducing unnecessary emergency room visits and hospital readmission rates.

We can all agree with the evidence-based HIE use case study, which supports the following view: Health IT can improve the quality, safety and efficiency of nursing services, and make a positive contribution to improving the patient’s nursing experience.

LANES use cases range from care transition to referral management and care coordination effectiveness. We are proud of the many LA multifunctional care provider providers involved in this important work in hospital and clinic environments.

All in all, we have adjusted the three priorities for 2021 to fully integrate IHI’s triple goals, while improving population health, improving patient care experience, and reducing costs.

Ali Modaressi is the CEO of LANES, a non-profit organization responsible for providing community-based health information exchange for hospitals, health systems, clinics, IPA, and health plans to manage medical services for residents of Los Angeles County.