The San Carlos Apache Healthcare Corporation will be participating in a non-profit, non-governmental health information exchange (HIE) called Health Current. It will not cost our patients anything and can help our doctors, healthcare providers, and health plans better coordinate your care by securely sharing your health information with one another.
This is a big step forward for our organization as it will allow our providers to access health information from external clinics and hospitals in Arizona that otherwise wouldn’t be readily available. This is extremely important and beneficial to our patients because it will improve the speed and quality of care.
The many benefits of HIE are better tracking and securely sharing patients’ complete medical histories, more and more healthcare providers are participating in HIE. HIE helps facilitate coordinated patient care, reduce duplicative treatments and avoid costly mistakes.
In the state of Arizona, nearly all non-Native hospitals utilize Health Current and being a part of this network is valuable to the Corporation, more importantly for the care of our patients.
The following examples will show the benefits of participating in the HIE:
Patient A is from San Carlos and receives their primary care at Izee’ Baa Gowąh. While on a trip to Phoenix, Patient A suffers an injury and is treated at a local hospital or emergency room but will need follow up care. Upon returning to San Carlos for follow up treatment, Patient A doesn’t have to worry about transporting the health records because our providers can use Health Current to access important information.
Patient B has been receiving care at Izee’ Baa Gowąh for their entire life but Patient B is now ready to attend college in Tucson. Patient B visits a hospital and the doctor in Tucson needs to access Patient B’s medical records. The doctor in Tucson will have access to Patient B’s records from Izee’ Baa Gowąh.
Patient C receives certain treatments outside of Izee’ Baa Gowąh. However, Patient C’s provider needs to access this information to create a treatment plan for Patient C. Our provider can access any lab results, x-ray reports or notes from the outside treatments by accessing Health Current.
Patient D had surgery when they were younger. Patient D does not remember the name of the procedure or the extent of the issue. Their new doctor needs to have access to that information in order to understand the current situation. The doctor would be able to access that older information using Health Current so that Patient D doesn’t have to guess on previous medical history.
Izee’ Baa Gowąh patients will automatically be opted-in to participate in HIE. Opting In will allow patients to take advantage of improved healthcare quality by reducing medication and medical errors. Make care more efficient by reducing unnecessary tests and services and improve the efficiency of care by ensuring everyone involved in a patient’s care has access to the same information.
Utilizing HIE will allow our patient to be more engaged and involved in their own healthcare and reduce the amount of time patients spend filling out paperwork and briefing providers on their medical histories. Overall, this is will be a great opportunity to support community health because it allows coordination with and support public health officials to improve the health of your community.
While HIE is extremely beneficial, if you choose to OPT-OUT a form must be completed, signed and turned into SCAHC. Otherwise, with no action your health information may be securely shared through Health Current.
For explanation of health information regarding patient medical records, contact Katherine Anderson at (928) 475-1266. To start the opt-process, please contact Lucia Jones at 928- 475-1402.
