A number of major hospitals have agreed to share patient data through a nonprofit that aims to connect Hawaii’s health providers with electronic medical records.
Castle Medical Center and Hawaii Pacific Health — parent company for Kapiolani Medical Center for Women & Children, Pali Momi Medical Center, Straub Clinic & Hospital and Wilcox Health — have signed on to share patient clinical records through Hawaii Health Information Exchange’s secure online system known as Health eNet.
The agreements broaden the exchange of information for communities statewide, said Christine Sakuda, executive director of the nonprofit established in 2006.
"By utilizing the Health eNet, these major health care providers will be able to improve patient care and manage costs for both the organization and their patients," she said.
As the first to connect via Health eNet, Sakuda said the hospitals, which pay a subscription fee, will be key to "increasing the effectiveness" of the system.
The Hawaii Health Information Exchange, which has received about $12.5 million in federal and private funding since its inception, is commissioned to develop a statewide EMR network to better coordinate medical care among providers. The organization has 15 employees.
This year’s Legislature appropriated $825,000 in operational funding for 2014.
"The next 12 months is a very critical year for us," Sakuda said, adding that the organization also plans to connect the major laboratories as well as Hilo Medical Center, the first public hospital. "The technology is the easy part. The challenging part is building trust among stakeholders to share that information and to govern the data appropriately."
The system will "go live" in November, allowing providers to share patient data and physicians to access basic health information such as medical histories, lab results and prescribed medications. The initiative also will help the state Department of Health to better monitor public health issues, including infectious diseases that could affect the population.
"The quality of care will improve and costs will be reduced because doctors won’t need to reorder diagnostic tests to get information that would be otherwise sitting, inaccessible, at another location," said Steve Robertson, HPH executive vice president and chief information officer.
