SureScripts Announces New Secure Exchange Network for Sharing of Medical Records

Eventually the fax will die and vendors like SureScripts are offering their new service to allow patient records to be shared security from one office to another. The example cites in the article talks about a patient that was waiting 3 days and was still waiting for one office to send to the other. SureScripts is the backbone for everyone’s e-prescribing use and now they are moving into some new territory with pilot programs on the books to begin soon. They have forms online for physicians or HIE’s to sign up. Just for the mentioning here’s a couple of other Superscript connectivity projects and services. If you have HealthVault, get your medication records and Quest is integrating some additional intelligence with analytics comparing lab results and medications. We are getting very smart today.

Surescripts Connects With Microsoft HealthVault Personal Health Records

Quest Diagnostics and Surescripts To Integrate Lab and Prescription Algorithms To Improve Safety and Outcomes

There will be more news I’m sure from others with their connected encrypted networks soon as they develop so when this happens we go up one more level and connect all of them next, which by the way is some what in the works too. With the network images, x-rays and other data can be shared from one location to another. If you have been a patient and had to cart around this information then sharing of records will make it easier for you too. BD

From the website:

“Surescripts is expanding the capabilities of its interoperable health information network to allow patient clinical information to be exchanged - physician to physician - on a national basis. This is a transformative event for the health care industry that will enable clinical information to be used in more timely and relevant ways to improve the quality of patient care. Surescripts' leadership in this area responds to a key need voiced by both the federal government and the health care industry for a network of this type. It also provides an opportunity for regional and proprietary networks operated by HIEs, IDNs, and EHR vendors to connect with one another using a common, open and secure national network. The network will be complementary to current EHR, HIE and IDN networks by providing an on ramp to Surescripts national backbone network, creating a "network of networks" that will enable clinical communication, regardless of technology platform or place of practice. The network also continues to provide support clinical health information exchange among current Pharmacy and PBMs.”

WASHINGTON -- Think you entered the digital health age when your doctor switched from paper charts to computerized medical records? Think again: An e-chart stored in one doctor's computer too often can't be read by another's across town.

Now the country's largest network for paperless prescribing is poised to help tackle that hurdle. Surescripts is expanding so that doctors around the country can choose to share medical reports, X-rays and other health data over its network much as they send e-prescriptions to drugstores today, regardless of what competing brand of computerized health records they use.

"What we're trying to do is modernize the way in which physicians communicate," says Dr. Doug Fridsma, who directs the Department of Health and Human Services' work to make electronic medical records, or EMRs, become "interoperable" - meaning doctors can share and view them from anywhere.

About 20 percent of doctors are estimated to use some form of EMR today, but those who can share records electronically tend to be members of the same large health system. Unless patients drag paper copies from doctor to doctor, competing physicians have to share records with each other by fax, which is time-consuming and often incomplete or even skipped altogether.

HHS officials wouldn't comment specifically on the Surescripts program, but say there's no one-size-fits-all solution to the challenge of exchanging these complicated records.