LGH and OLOL launch data sharing

Lafayette General Health and Our Lady of Lourdes launch data sharing program between Electronic Health Records (EHR) for benefit of patients and healthcare providers

Implementation enables data sharing across health systems, regardless of electronic health record (EHR) vendor, increasing IT connectivity nationwide

LAFAYETTE – Lafayette General Health (LGH) and Our Lady of Lourdes (OLOL) announced a collaborative program to share data between electronic health records to provide easier access to patients and healthcare providers at the point of care.

LGH and OLOL are two of the first healthcare organizations in the country to share and retrieve health data via the new connection between two of the leading health IT data exchange networks, managed by CommonWell Health Alliance® and Carequality. By taking part in this pilot, Lafayette General Health and Our Lady of Lourdes can now exchange patients’ electronic medical records seamlessly through the use of technology.

For Acadiana residents who see physicians at both Lafayette General Health and Our Lady of Lourdes, this means:

Quicker treatment decisions
Reduced readmissions & test duplication
Improved care coordination
Potential cost savings

No longer bringing your medical records from one physician to another; data is made readily available within the Electronic Health Record (EHR).

Lafayette General Health successfully completed the CommonWell-Carequality connection pilot project, which established bi-directional data sharing through directed queries between participating hospitals and health systems. CommonWell Health Alliance and Carequality came together to extend providers’ ability to request and retrieve health records electronically from other providers across the country. This interoperability helps to create a smooth and improved patient experience by facilitating the flow of patient information regardless of where the person receives care. Lafayette General Health was one of only two health systems in the country selected by CommonWell for the pilot.

"Thanks to the CommonWell-Carequality connection, our patients can have access to their medical records regardless of the electronic health record a healthcare facility uses," said Lafayette General Health President David L. Callecod, FACHE. "When data is made readily available, providers can make diagnostic and treatment decisions more quickly, and patients can recover sooner. Better data means better communication with our patients and providers, better care and better outcomes."

"With over twenty-eight different partners in the CareQuality CommonWell initiative, we are bridging the medical records gap between community hospitals, physicians and regional medical clinics. This alliance represents a step forward in health record connectivity to benefit our patients," said Our Lady of Lourdes Regional Medical Center Chief Executive Officer Bryan Lee.

Lafayette uses Cerner Millennium®, a health care IT platform designed to support and engage consumers through their health care journey across venues of care, to record and share patient information across its health system. Cerner, a global leader in health care technology, is a founding member of the CommonWell Health Alliance and Lafayette has been connected since 2017 to facilitate the exchange of health data nationwide. Rather than only being able to exchange data with providers who are on different systems through one-off, point-to-point connections, the CommonWell-Carequality connection will help Lafayette connect with a wider range of participating hospitals and health systems in the region and across the country.

The CommonWell-Carequality connection removes a longstanding barrier to the interoperability of health data, helping increase connectivity between hospitals and health systems nationwide. Since implementing the CommonWell-Carequality connection in December 2018, Lafayette General Health and Our Lady of Lourdes have electronically shared more than 200,000 documents, which previously would have required time-consuming and manual effort using mailed or faxed copies of records. This broad exchange helps improve the coordination of care for patients who receive care from multiple locations, as many people do. Within the first few weeks of implementation, Lafayette General Health retrieved documents from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, which has a high referral rate from Lafayette.

"CommonWell and the recent integration of Carequality has been instrumental in providing a wide-ranging picture of patients and their interactions with the healthcare system," said Africa Dauphiney, nurse practitioner, Lafayette. "It has allowed me to quickly answer a key question I often ask patients, 'Any recent visits to other facilities?' This allows me to create a compressive treatment plan, merging access to information and patient care."

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About Lafayette General Health

Lafayette General Health (LGH) is a non-profit, community-owned regional healthcare system committed to always delivering excellence. LGH serves the south-central region of Louisiana by aligning with facilities across a 10-parish area known as Acadiana.

LGH's flagship hospital, Lafayette General Medical Center, in operation since 1911, is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit corporation that does not pay out any revenue to shareholders as for-profits do. LGH also owns or manages Lafayette General Surgical Hospital, Lafayette General Orthopedic Hospital, St. Martin Hospital, University Hospital & Clinics, Acadia General Hospital and Abrom Kaplan Memorial Hospital, and has several affiliations with facilities across the region.

Both Lafayette General Medical Center and University Hospital & Clinics are major teaching hospitals, providing graduate medical education across many disciplines.

LGH owns LGMD, a non-profit corporation that operates and manages several physician clinics including Family Medicine and Internal Medicine, as well as many specialists and surgeons.

LGH is a founding member of the Ochsner Health Network, a collaboration of leading health systems across the greater Gulf South region.

In 2016, LGH offered community benefits in excess of $345 million. LGH property and assets total over $500 million, employing approximately 4,500 staff. For more information about LGH and its affiliates, visit LafayetteGeneral.com.

About Our Lady of Lourdes

Founded by the Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady in 1949, Our Lady of Lourdes (LourdesRMC.com) is a regional acute care medical center focused on the healing ministry of Jesus Christ. With the recent addition of Women’s & Children’s Hospital,  the Acadiana health system employs more than 2,200 people and offers a physician staff of over 550 doctors in a variety of medical and surgical specialties. As a local healthcare leader, Lourdes provides a wide-ranging network of facilities including Centers of Excellence in the areas of Orthopedics, Stroke and a Robotics Surgery Program.  Women’s & Children’s Hospital offers the area’s only Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, Level III Surgical Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and a growing list of specialists to keep kids closer to home for serious care.  The hospital is home to the only burn unit in Southwest Louisiana and a Commission on Cancer accredited oncology program.  As part of the largest, non-profit Catholic health care system in Louisiana,  Lourdes adopted the multi-million dollar EPIC technology platform in September 2017; joining and building connectivity with major health care institutions such as M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Mayo Clinic and Johns Hopkins Medicine on the EPIC medical records system.

About Cerner

Cerner’s health technologies connect people and information systems at more than 27,500 contracted provider facilities worldwide dedicated to creating smarter and better care for individuals and communities. Recognized globally for innovation, Cerner assists clinicians in making care decisions and assists organizations in managing the health of their populations. The company also offers an integrated clinical and financial system to help manage day-to-day revenue functions, as well as a wide range of services to support clinical, financial and operational needs, focused on people. For more information, visit Cerner.com, The Cerner Blog or connect on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter or The Cerner Podcast. Nasdaq: CERN. Smarter Care. Better Outcomes. Healthier You.

About CommonWell Health Alliance

CommonWell Health Alliance is a not-for-profit trade association of health IT company working together to create universal access to health data nationwide. CommonWell members represent two-thirds of the acute care EHR market1 and more than one-third of the ambulatory care EHR market2, as well as market leaders and technology innovators supporting care settings such as post-acute care, imaging, perinatal, laboratory, retail pharmacy, oncology, population health, emergency services and more. CommonWell and its members are committed to the belief that provider access to health data must be built into information technologies at a reasonable cost for use by a broad range of health care providers and the populations and people they serve.

To learn more about CommonWell Health Alliance, visit www.commonwellalliance.org. Engage with CommonWell on our Blog, as well as through Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter using the handle,@CommonWell. CommonWell Health Alliance® and the CommonWell Logo are registered trademarks of CommonWell Health Alliance Inc.

About Carequality

Carequality, an initiative of The Sequoia Project, is a national-level, consensus-built, common interoperability framework to enable exchange between and among health data sharing networks. Carequality brings together a diverse group of representatives, including electronic health record (EHR) vendors, record locator service (RLS) providers and other types of existing networks from the private sector and government, to determine technical and policy agreements to enable data to flow between and among networks, platforms, and geographies, much like the telecommunications industry did for linking cell phone networks. For more information, visit www.carequality.org and follow us at twitter.com/carequalitynet.