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by Brooke Bunch
The National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National
Institutes of Health is funding OU-COM to assist in the planning
of an online medical records system designed to significantly
upgrade health care for the underserved in Southeastern Ohio.
OU-COM is a partner in the Appalachian Regional Informatics
Consortium (ARIC) Planning Project, which is aiming to provide
improved patient care, reduce medical errors, control operating
costs and promote academic research on rural medicine. The
consortium is a part of the larger Integrated Advanced
Information Management Systems Consortium, a group of almost 40
universities.
A
$275,119 grant from the NLM was awarded to develop the
electronic medical records system for health-care providers in
the Appalachian region of Ohio, which includes Athens, Hocking
and Vinton counties.
“Our ultimate goal is to achieve better patient care,” says
Brian Phillips, the college’s chief information officer.
Phillips is one of the co-authors of the grant and a principal
investigator.
With a mission to improve access to medical information in rural
Ohio by developing a model for an electronic information system,
the ARIC project relies on the cooperation of a seven-member
group that represents mental health-care and primary care
providers and biomedical researchers.
The result will be an electronic system capable of providing
shared information on medical records between health-care
providers.
“Currently a lot of essential and necessary patient health
information does not exchange hands unless a patient
self-discloses,” says Roy Johnson, a former CORE administrator
and now ARIC project manager.
Johnson says the current system involves the use of paper record
keeping, a slow and time-consuming process.
“People spend enormous amounts of time keeping these records,”
he says.
According to Phillips, physicians spend an average of 38 percent
of their time and nurses spend 50 percent of their time charting
medical records.
The new electronic system, designed to provide online access,
will extensively reduce the use of paper records.
“We’re going to put medical records on an electronic system and
make access available for qualifying health-care providers,”
Phillips says. “For example, physicians will be able to go
online and access their patients’ records.”
According to Phillips, only nine percent of practices in the
United States use electronic medical record systems.
“This is definitely cutting edge,” he says. “And not just
because of the technology, but, more importantly, because of the
development of the consortium and the unprecedented cooperation
required for this project to succeed.”
Johnson says the project is unique because of the diversity of
the participating organizations, which includes OU-COM, the
College of Health and Human Services, the Edison Biotechnology
Institute, Alcohol Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services,
Appalachian Behavioral Healthcare Center, Doctors Hospital of
Nelsonville, Health Recovery Services, O’Bleness Memorial
Hospital, Southern Consortium for Children, Tri-County Mental
Health and Counseling Services, and University Medical
Associates.
“The participation of both primary care and behavioral
health-care providers makes this a very unique project,”
Phillips says.
Phillips says the implementation of such a system is very
expensive, noting that usually only large health-care systems
can afford it.
“No consortiums yet provide this type of practice and none are
in rural areas,” he says. “We’re one of two organizations to
receive NLM’s “Next Generation” program funding.”
Phillips says, ideally, the system will reduce the costs for
physicians in the region and cap the cost for maintaining
medical records.
The system should be mature in 10 years if all the goals are
achieved, says Phillips.
“Right now we’re in the investigation period,” Johnson says.
“This definitely has to take a phased approach.”
For more information on the project, visit
www.oucom.ohio.edu/aric.
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