Off the charts: Utah leads in electronic medical records transition.

• Author: Campbell, Carolyn
• Position: Techknowledge

When Jan Root's 88-year-old mother broke her hip last year, "in the hoopla of admitting her to the emergency room, we forgot to tell the doctor that she takes Synthroid, a thyroid medicine," Root recalls. "She was in the hospital for a week before we figured out that we forgot to tell them. Somehow, that information never got into the hospital's paper records."

When Root's mother was discharged to a physical therapy facility, the prescription information wasn't included in the paper discharge notes. "To facilitate my mother's receiving Synthroid, we would have needed to get the information from her primary care doctor, who issued the prescription. At the time, I could only remember that his name starts with WC she says.

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Root is president and CEO of the Utah Health Information Network (UHIN), a nonprofit electronic medical records exchange that originated in 1993 through the ongoing efforts of the state legislature. She explains that her mother's situation could have been avoided through the information exchange that electronic medical records provide. "At UHIN, we basically want to connect the dots."

If "Dr. W" had been participating in UHIN's clinical health information exchange (cHIE), with Root's mother's permission, her basic health information would have been pulled into a secure electronic database from the doctor's electronic health record. As a result, the emergency room could have accessed her primary care records.

"They could send out a query, bring the information up on the screen and retrieve her prescription. It would be a way to transfer the information securely, at a time when she was under pain medication and not good for anything, and her discombobulated relatives did not have the information," Root says.

On the Forefront

Root explains that because of UHIN, which currently serves all Utah hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers, national laboratories and approximately 90 percent of local medical providers, Utah insurance companies and health care providers are much more lightly integrated compared to other states, giving Utah a head start on electronic medical records integration.

And because 60 percent of Utah physicians already utilize electronic medical records, Root says that Utah is a national leader in health information technology. Ongoing efforts should keep Utah at the forefront of health-related IT.

Utah-based HealthInsight is another company leading the way in electronic health care. As part...