Connectivity in Nursing Care

Historically, health care has been siloed, and therefore fragmented. Different parts of the health care system do not communicate effectively. This leads to gaps in care, redundancies, inefficient processes, and ultimately higher costs, as well as poor patient experience.

By increasing the use of electronic health records (EHRs) we are building more interoperability, which allows us to eliminate waste throughout and ensure the patient and entire CareTeam have the right data in the moment, thus delivering greater efficiency and ultimately lowering costs. Increased EHR connectivity helps streamline the prior authorization (PA) and benefits verification processes. The integration allows for securely gathering appropriate patient information, including insurance, lab testing, weight, and diagnosis codes.

Our systems are integrated with Epic, the nation's largest EHR provider, which connects with 75 percent of U.S.-based health records. We have also joined other alliances of providers that agree to share patient information including Carequality, the CommonWell Alliance and eHealth Exchange.

We can see the EHRs for almost 70 percent of specialty patients, and approximately 30 percent of specialty PA requests are submitted with information from relevant EHRs.

Internally, we are expanding the connectivity to other business units. Today MinuteClinic, Accordant, and Coram are fully integrated with these interoperability solutions with other care management programs.

AccordantCare Management nurses use EHR and digital connectivity, like secure messaging directly with patients, to access more member-related information that allows them to efficiently and effectively extend whole person support and collaborate with other health care providers to offer highly coordinated care for conditions such as diabetes. This improves a member's appropriate adherence and health outcomes which can lead to 11 percent reduction in hospitalizations and lower overall health care costs.

Interoperability increases efficiency and reduces costs

With our integrated solutions, when a doctor orders an infusion through an EHR or another integrated network solution, the Coram infusion team can access the order in our system – along with all the rest of the patient's information such as their contact information, their medical history including comorbidity, and anything else of relevance.

Once the patient receives the care, that information is also documented in in our EHR system. With our connectivity, that information, in near real-time, is available to the ordering physician. This improves data quality and efficiency and leads to not just a better patient experience and higher quality care, but also reduces errors and lowers costs.

Future Enhancements

CVS Health has made significant investments in interoperability and we continue to add to those. The next step is to have all of a patient's medical history and information in a longitudinal view across the entire enterprise. We are working to create a clinical data repository that is a central “source of truth” and make that information accessible to care providers across our entire enterprise. This breaks down all internal silos. It also has the potential to break down silos across the health care system by integrating with external providers to transform a fragmented health care system and create efficient processes that ensures patients receive high-quality care, while reducing inefficiency and cost across the spectrum of care.

Want to learn more about how connectivity increases efficiency and reduces costs? Ask Us