Projects
Smart Health seeks to change the way health care is delivered in Silicon Valley, through the well-coordinated utilization of information technology.
Building a Regional Health Exchange
One of the key elements to making this happen is a regional health information exchange. The exchange would link not only providers, but employers and health plans, and, ultimately, consumers. Smart Health has identified a series of projects that will put the infrastructure in place to support a regional health exchange, and define best practices for the seamless linkage of institutions.
Project 1: Personal Emergency Health Records for Silicon Valley residents
Participants:
Palm, Tolven Health, multiple Valley corporations
Business Problem:
Patient data usually resides in multiple locations – multiple physician offices, hospitals and emergency departments, insurance companies, pharmacies, and labs. When a patient arrives in an ED, even in an integrated delivery system, much of this information is not available. As a result, hospitals must do costly and time consuming tests, or, in a worst case, make errors that could be avoidable if patient information were readily available.
Proposed Solution:
Smart Health has been working with Tolven Health to develop an open source personal emergency health record that can collect data from multiple sources and deliver it quickly and securely over the Internet, enabling access to patient information anywhere in the world, any time. The business model for the plan is a consumer/employer subscription to the records, at a cost of $3-$5 per month per individual.
Project 2: Linking Patient Records Between Hospital and Physician Office
Participants:
Daughters of Charity Health Systems, O’Connor Hospital, SCCIPA
Business Problem:
Daughters of Charity is presently implementing a system wide health data system that will link patient information for its six hospitals. It seeks to link patient data from its network of 1200 referring physicians to the hospital system to improve patient care, reduce the cost of duplicated services, and increase efficiency.
Proposed Solution:
Increase penetration of electronic medical records in physician offices and connect these records with the hospital system. Smart Health, in partnership with Daughters of Charity and the Santa Clara County Independent Physician Association (SCCIPA) has recently received a grant for $500,000 of medical record software to support physician office and connectivity from the Center for Community Health Leadership. Daughters of Charity will provide integration services to enable the secure flow of information from physician offices to O’Connor Hospital. The goal is to build a connected system that can be expanded to other hospitals, both in the community and in the Daughters of Charity system.
Project 3: Reducing Administrative Waste
Participants:
IBM, Cisco Systems, multiple health care providers
Business Problem:
The cumbersome process of insurance claims processing is responsible for high costs for health care providers, insurers, and, ultimately, employers and consumers.
Proposed Solution:
Develop a system that enables a consumer to enter a hospital or physician office, have claims eligibility verified in real time, and then, after medical services are provided, have the insurance claim adjudicated in real time while the patient is in the office so that the patient’s portion of the cost can be determined immediately. Then, with the use of a POS system, charge predetermined accounts for the patient’s portion of the payment.