Author: Jessica Hagins
We love hearing from our participants about their experiences using NC HealthConnex’s value-added services. We spoke with one user of the NC HealthConnex Clinical Portal who has been there from the beginning and seen the system mature into a valuable tool for patient care.
Libby Willard is a retired nurse analyst and project manager who worked at Northern Regional Hospital in Mt. Airy until October. She started as an RN but her keen interest in technology and interoperability led her to obtain a master’s degree in nursing informatics.
Willard remembers that adoption of health information exchanges (HIEs) was pushed forward as a required component of the Electronic Health Record Incentive Programs by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), but the data flowing in from electronic health record systems (EHRs) was not yet useful for patient care.
“It was more demographic. It showed the patient had a visit, but it didn’t show the results, lab results, the physician documentation or the medicines prescribed. We didn’t get a lot of information that was truly needed to provide care for the patient,” said Willard.
Willard worked to bring her hospital online with NC HealthConnex as an early adopter at a time when interoperability was still evolving and getting physicians and nurses to consider looking up patient data in an HIE was a challenge. However, a recent hospital visit by NC HIEA Business Relations Manager Tim Taylor turned their attention back to the Clinical Portal.
“I feel like Tim gave us new insight to take another look and increase the utilization, especially for those providers who work in specialty areas or emergency rooms. When he demonstrated it, I was thinking that was a vast improvement of what I saw when I first started with it. It seemed like it was fairly easy to use.”
What most stood out to Willard was being able to see the lab results, radiology reports, X-ray results and data from patients’ out-of-state provider visits. Through the NC HIEA’s agreement with the eHealth Exchange, patient records are also available in bordering states, such as Tennessee, Georgia and Virginia.
“You may be caring for a patient who may be seeing multiple providers, multiple specialists. Maybe you are the primary physician, but they go to a cardiologist or neurologist that’s not in your network. They go to ED visits, urgent cares. That makes it hard for the provider to know what’s been changed with them, but you can go into NC HealthConnex and get that information.”
This information became essential after Hurricane Helene devastated parts of western NC. A lot of residents fled to Mt. Airy for safety and medical care as the area was not affected as strongly.
“Some of these people, their medical records got destroyed; they don’t have them,” said Willard, “Take for example one of our nursing facilities here in Mt. Airy, they just got 45 patients from a displaced area in northwest NC, and the only thing those patients had was the clothes on their back. I don’t know if that facility is set up to use NC HealthConnex, but they could find more information on those patients in it.”
The NC HIEA took action to help affected providers by expediting participation agreements from organizations in the hardest hit areas. Access to the NC HealthConnex Clinical Portal is essential to assist health care providers in ensuring continuity of care to displaced patients. Due to these efforts, 141 new Clinical Portal accounts have been added so far.
Willard says that her retirement is bittersweet because she will be missing out on future technology improvements, but she believes the hospital is in good hands. The hospital’s quality director and a new nurse analyst are motivated to explore how NC HealthConnex can help and to get the physicians involved.
“I hate that I have left in this era because it’s so exciting, but they’ve got a plan to bring the Clinical Portal back into the workflow and discuss it more with people to see where it’s needed the most.”
The NC HIEA is committed to continuing support for those providers in western North Carolina impacted by Hurricane Helene. If your organization has been affected and you need access to information on patients with whom you have a treatment relationship, contact the NC HIEA Provider Relations team via email at hiea@nc.gov or via phone at 919-754-6912. Visit our website for information on steps to gain access based on your current participation status.