Fergie's Tech Blog

Pennsylvania Hospitals to Share Patient Data

This sounds like it might have the potential for a fairly severe privacy data breach if not implemented and secured properly.

A ZD Internet article by M.L. Baker, via eWeek, reports that:

Community hospitals and family physicians in rural and suburban Pennsylvania have taken up a plan to make sure a patient's general practitioner knows what treatment the patient received in the hospital, and vice versa.

Medical errors often occur during handoffs, when a patient moves from one site of care to another but patient information does not. The lost information also costs time and money because health care providers schedule unnecessary and expensive tests. As a result, this week, Geisinger Health Systems announced that it has contracted with enterprise content management company Vignette to create a portal that lets doctors at one site see details of care at another site.

Geisinger and two other unaffiliated community hospitals have agreed to share information as part of the Geisinger RHIO (regional health information organization), which covers more than 3 million patients. Up to eight other health systems are slated to join the RHIO over the next three years.

posted by Fergie @ 4/05/2006 08:21:00 AM