Memphis Health Information Exchange Beginning 3rd Year of Clinical Operations

On May 3, 2008, our Memphis-based health information exchange has been in operation for two years. Funded by AHRQ, the State of Tennesse, and Vanderbilt and governed by the non-profit MidSouth eHealth Alliance, the Exchange has come a long way

TheExchange currently has 356 people using the system for clinical care.

• Physician / Provider roles - 199
• Nurse roles - 109
  
• Registrars and unit clerk functions - 48

These numbers will change as the last major system goes "near real time" in the next few weeks and as more ambulatory care providers are introduced to the program. The number of clinicians will increase and the number of registrars and unit clerks will decrease dramatically.

Data are accessed by authorized personnel in 30 sites, including 11 emergency rooms, 15 primary care clinics, and 4 hospitalist groups. Expansion to other emergency department settings is taking place in May and June of 2008. Access is only through two-factor authentication and secure Web browsers in restricted settings. 100% of access transactions undergo some form of audit. Use is restricted to clinical settings. No aggregate data or metrics are kept. Patients may "opt out" at the institutional level.

The Exchange grants secure access to almost 3 million patient encounters.

• Total number of unique individuals - 1,050,000
• Total number of unique individuals with clinical data (not
  just claims) - 809,000

Our latest inventory of data elements from the two-years of operation counts:

• Over 64 million laboratory tests (growing at an average of 88,000 test results a day).
  
• 1.3 million radiology reports (growing at almost 2,000 per day)
  
• Over 16 thousand dictated discharge summaries
• Over 218 thousand anatomic pathology reports
• Approximately 40 thousand other clinical notes

(Follow this link to compare with our February 2008 update)

More data and implications will soon be found at our Regional Informatics Site