IBM Unveil First Electronic Health Records Exchange for a U.S. Government Agency

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WASHINGTON, DC and ARMONK, NEW YORK - 20 Mar 2009: IBM (NYSE: IBM), MedVirginia and the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) today announced a first-of-a-kind electronic records exchange system to help speed the process of granting disability benefits for millions of Americans. Through the use of new software and services, the SSA shaved the amount of time to process requests for medical records needed to evaluate disability benefits from months to minutes.

The project, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN) Cooperative, began just 14 months ago and represents the first health information exchange between a regional health information organization and a U.S. federal agency. The new system uses IBM’s Health Information Provider (HSP) solution to not only reduce processing times, but to also improve claims accuracy and reduce costs.

“Now is the time to expand the usage and functionality of electronic health records,” said Michael Matthews, Chief Executive Officer of MedVirginia. “This significant milestone demonstrates that disparate health systems across the U.S. can securely connect and exchange health information in order to enhance the quality, safety and cost-effectiveness of patient healthcare.”

Improving patient care and reducing overall healthcare costs through smart technology systems is a key priority of The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Allocated economic recovery funding includes $19 billion for grants and incentives that utilize health IT in order to save lives by reducing waste and decreasing medical errors.

Verifying Disability Claims – From Months to Minutes
The SSA uses individual medical records to determine almost 3 million disability claims each year. To make those decisions, the agency relies on doctors, hospitals, and other health professionals to provide medical information about patients. Through the migration from paper to electronic transmissions based on the patient’s authorization, the agency is able to significantly reduce the time spent waiting for medical records and improve the service for those it serves.

“The hard work done by organizations like SSA and MedVirginia over the past several years, coupled with new economic recovery funding, provides an unprecedented opportunity to build on this exciting progress in the health care community,” says Tom Romeo, IBM Vice President and Government Healthcare services leader. “IBM’s experience with health information exchanges and significant investments in the health IT space give us a distinct position to help our clients as this new digital healthcare infrastructure is expanded around the world.”

The goal of the NHIN is to enable secure access to healthcare data and real time information sharing and exchange of healthcare data among physicians, patients, hospitals, laboratories and pharmacies, and other stakeholders, regardless of the location or application.

As one of the primary IT partners to develop the NHIN architectural foundation, IBM is providing the technology capabilities and business process experience to enable a set of services to securely connect MedVirginia and SSA together using the NHIN framework.

Source: IBM