MDNews - San Antonio

COVER FEATURE CriticalConnection South Texas: The Beginnings of a Community Health Record for Physicians, by Physicians T HIS YEAR SEES the emergence of a new, member-owned physician cooperative christened as the CriticalConnection South Texas Cooperative. The Cooperative is dedicated to serving the practicing physician and to the connection of physician offices to a Community Health Record. Although the Cooperative is newly formed, its roots predate the current fed- eral and state health information exchange (HIE) initiatives. Its lineage traces back to more than a decade ago, when a group of Travis County physicians came together as an ad hoc committee to determine how patient information should be shared among a patient's treating physicians. Their efforts where driven by the belief that physicians are better able to provide quality care with access to information on the patient care being provided by other treating physicians. The work of the physicians led to a multi- year proof-of-concept demonstration in South Austin. During the demonstration, participating physicians were connected to a Community Health Record that provided them with patient medical data generated by all of the participating physicians. Some physicians had electronic health records, some had voice-to-text dictation, and some used traditional dictation to capture their patient encounters. But regardless of their method of recording patient data, they were able to populate the Community Health Record and obtain the relevant patient data from the other treating physicians. Participating physi- cians were able to access relevant patient information, including encounter notes, lab reports and imaging reports, at their computer terminals. With this capability, clinics avoided the frequent frustration of hunting for critical patient data at the time of service. CriticalConnection South Texas Cooperative Based on this successful demonstration, the physicians formed CriticalConnection Central Texas Cooperative to operate a region-wide Community Health Record open to all participating physicians in Central Texas. With the benefit of "les- sons learned" from this pioneer effort, CriticalConnection South Texas has a tested road map to establish a Community Health Record for South Texas physicians. Among the early advocates for the South Texas Cooperative is Clinical Pathology PHOTOS © DAVID SMITH/GARY PERKINS PHOTOGRAPHY

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