Dr. Jan Lee to Speak at National Governors’ Conference

Jan Lee, M.D., DHIN's CEO was a featured speaker at the winter meeting of the National Governors Association Conference held in Washington, D.C. on January 14th and 15th. Dr. Lee discussed the impact a state health information exchange can have in supporting healthcare by lowering costs and lessening the time needed to provide care. Dr. Lee also highlighted DHIN's expanding footprint in Delaware and the positive impact access to the community health record is having on the broad community of health care related organizations such as school based clinics, home health agencies and urgent care facilities. Currently 53% of home health agencies, 54% of urgent care facilities, and 75% of school based clinics in the state are enrolled in DHIN.

The National Governors Association (NGA) is a bipartisan public policy organization representing the collective voice of the nation's governors. NGA represents the governors of the 50 states, three territories and two commonwealths on Capitol Hill and before the Administration on key federal issues and helps states develop and implement innovative solutions to public policy challenges through the NGA Center for Best Practices. Through NGA, governors identify priority issues and deal collectively with matters of public policy and governance at the state and national levels.

The Year in Review

DHIN now has more than 7,000 users enrolled from 688 practices and organizations 100% of acute care facilities participate 100% of long-term care/state nursing facilities are enrolled 14 million deliveries of medical results and reports were made in 2013 (labs, microbiology, radiology, pathology, transcribed reports and ADTs) 1.6 million unique patients from all 50 states have clinical data in DHIN

Here are highlights of the year broken out by category: Enrollments, New Hospitals, Private Labs, Event Notification, Immunization Reporting and Links to Radiology Reporting.

New Hospitals
Atlantic General Hospital in Berlin, MD went live in June, becoming the first out of state hospital to participate in DHIN. Union Hospital in Elkton, MD is expected to go live later in 2014.With a large number of people crossing state borders for medical care, having reports in DHIN from all nearby hospitals is critical to continuity of care. Similarly, having Delawareans' previously generated medical results available to the Atlantic General emergency room physicians will enhance care.


Private Laboratories Now at 100% Participation
With the addition of MedLabs Diagnostics and Mercy Diagnostics in December, all major private laboratories in Delaware are now reporting results through DHIN. This stands as a major achievement for closing data gaps in the community health record and helps to significantly reduce the cost of sending results and save providers valuable time in delivering patient care. The following laboratories and imaging firms joined DHIN in 2013:

• Mid-Delaware Imaging
• Med Labs Diagnostics
• ACCU Reference Medical Lab
• Mercy Diagnostics
• Ocean Medical Imaging
• Diagnostic Imaging Associates

Event Notification
In September a pilot program of the DHIN Event Notification System was launched and began providing emergency department discharge results to Medicaid managed care organizations (MCO). In the three months it has been active, roughly 6,500 notifications per month have been sent - typically within 24 hours of discharge. This system gives MCOs the opportunity to quickly engage with transitions of care experienced by their customers. ENS is also available for ambulatory practices to use and DHIN is in the process of launching a beta test with three ambulatory practices. The beta testing is expected to be completed in February with a full rollout of ENS planned for launch soon thereafter.

Immunizations Reporting
Electronic immunization reporting to the Division of Public Health through DHIN continued to grow with the addition of 10 practices and 67 Walgreens locations reporting in December. This has relieved DPH of the manual task of inputting thousands of reports each month and has made immunization data available much more quickly. Nearly half of reports in December were sent through DHIN.

Links to Radiology Images
In November the Radiology Department at Nanticoke Hospital began embedding direct links to images in the written reports posted on DHIN. This was an important "first" and is giving providers the opportunity to both read a written report and view the actual image on the computer in their offices without needing to purchase additional equipment or software. It is expected that additional organizations will begin adopting this approach in 2014.

DHIN in the Skies!

DHIN was featured in a video shown on American Airlines International flights in December. The video, titled "Safe & Secure Delivery of Medical Results," featured testimonials about DHIN and clips from interviews with DHIN CEO Dr. Jan Lee. View the video on our website by choosing the Videos tab http://www.dhin.org.

Just a reminder: the DHIN Help Desk is open every weekday from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. for all DHIN subscribers. Medicity, our third-party software and technical production vendor, covers overflow calls during that time and handles inquiries at night and over the weekends. Please contact us at 302-480-1770 or send an email to helpdesk@dhin.org for fast attention and assistance.

"I wish we would have been on DHIN from the beginning! It’s really simplified things - before, we would be on and off the phone all day with the hospitals trying to get results, and we had so much trouble getting all the information we needed. Being the nurse manager, I get so tied up during the day, so DHIN has made my life so much easier."

Melissa Salazar
Nurse Manager
Sunshine Health Professionals