Suzanne Miller, RN, CCTC, and Manager of the Kidney/Pancreas Transplant Office at The Nebraska Medical Center calls it painful.” In fact, it would often take a month to gather all the medical records for some patients.

“It didn’t matter if we called again and again, we would still have trouble getting the records quickly,” Miller says. The bottom line, she continues, is the transplant program will not see a referred patient for the initial consultation unless all the medical records are received and reviewed. “If, for example, we have a candidate with a prior cancer history, then we want to send that to the Tumor Registry first for their opinion.”

In July 2006, Miller hired a 0.8 FTE to help schedule the pre-transplant process. “She was an organizer who tracked the records into the program,” Miller adds, “but she left the position after one year.”

Fortunately for Miller, she had already begun to investigate a new solution – an electronic medical records management service. Her interest was peaked in early 2007 when she came upon an abstract describing the use of the eHealthConnect service from eHealth Global Technologies (Rochester, NY) at another transplant center.

Then, Miller’s supervisor, Cassandra Smith-Fields, RN, MSN, MBA, Executive Director, Solid Organ Transplantation, returned from a national transplant meeting in April 2007, where she met with eHealth Global. After learning about eHealthConnect, Smith-Fields supported the implementation of the service at The Nebraska Medical Center.

In July 2007, the center began using eHealthConnect to collect all external patient information. The transplant coordinators make one request to eHealth Global’s customer support team, who then collects, digitizes, organizes, stores and secures the medical records for clinical viewing. The electronic records are then sent The Nebraska Medical Center and stored on a shared drive for the Kidney/Pancreas Transplant Department. Future plans include scanning the records into the
electronic medical record.

“I was skeptical at first about how quickly eHealthConnect would receive the records release from some hospitals that we deal with,” Miller says. “But, they’ve been more successful than we were.”

According to Miller, the center now receives records much quicker – on average within five days and in some cases, as soon as one to two days after the request. “This really eliminates a huge delay up front,” Miller notes.

She also finds eHealth Global very knowledgeable about HIPAA patient privacy rights and policies for medical records release. “Many hospitals have their own interpretation of HIPAA. eHealth Global’s staff has received a lot of education on this topic and they know exactly what to say to guide these facilities.”

The results of eHealthConnect are apparent throughout the transplant center. In the pre-transplant area, Miller has seen staff productivity increase to the point they are caught up and all the charts are back to scheduling. “We’ve made some other changes besides implementing eHealthConnect, but the net result is the evaluation period has decreased from four months to two weeks.”

For The Nebraska Medical Center Transplant Program, retrieving medical records is a more consistent, less stressful and seamless process. “It is almost like eHealth Global is an extension of our department,” Miller says. She credits the company with helping to improve the efficiency of the process as well. Prior to implementation of the service, the center obtained a five-year medical history for each patient. “It was too hard to go back later and get records that we just got everything, even if we really didn’t need it,” Miller adds. eHealth Global has helped the transplant program tailor requests to the patient condition, further streamlining and reducing the time it takes to receive the records.

Yet the most notable result is the impact on patient care. “So many of these patients have co-morbidities that if they wait too long, they may no longer be candidates,” Miller explains. “There is no doubt the sooner these patients receive their transplant, the better their outcome.”