OREANDA-NEWS. December 30, 2014. Capella Healthcare is on its way to creating easy-to-access longitudinal patient records. By acquiring and aggregating clinical information from across the various settings of care that serve patients, Capella Healthcare is empowering clinicians and patients by providing the right information at the right time.

To achieve this vision, Capella has partnered with RelayHealth which offers industry-leading capabilities in bringing together multi-vendor data for a single view of the patient.

The healthcare system, which includes 13 acute care and specialty hospital facilities across six states, is leveraging the solution to consolidate clinical information from a wide array of disparate electronic health record (EHR) systems, enabling data exchange across the healthcare enterprise. With RelayHealth, Capella Healthcare is now working to acquire and aggregate information from a variety of information systems into one view, making it possible for clinicians to access comprehensive patient information.

"Our hospitals are using technologies from three different hospital-based vendor platforms, our employed physicians are using yet another vendor EHR, and our community physicians utilize a variety of other EHRs. All of this creates a fragmented and very complex view of our patients," said Alan Smith, senior vice president and chief information officer at Capella Healthcare. "Even with this complexity, we want to work towards our clinicians having easy access to complete patient information at the point of care and not have to manually put together each patient's story. More information will drive more informed care decisions and support coordination across the care continuum. We also believe our patients should have a single portal to interact with in order to provide one-stop shopping in accessing all of their clinical data."

Capella Healthcare is in the process of completing the first two phases of its RelayHealth journey which include: (1) sending Consolidated CDA data from its hospitals to RelayHealth and meeting its meaningful use patient engagement requirements and (2) sending clinical results so that they can be distributed electronically to physicians' EHRs. In 2015, Capella will migrate its employed physicians to the patient portal as well as offer it to community physicians within each of its communities.

"We are helping support organizations in the transition to value-based care and enabling a patient-centric approach. By making it possible for Capella to aggregate comprehensive clinical information for clinicians, we are creating opportunities for information to truly make a difference in patient outcomes," said Ken Tarkoff, senior vice president and general manager, RelayHealth. "Our single data platform not only supports customers to meet the significant milestone of meaningful use, but it also supports their broader patient engagement strategy into the future."

About Capella Healthcare
Capella Healthcare partners with communities to build strong local healthcare systems that are known for quality patient care. Based in Franklin, Tenn., Capella owns and/or operates 13 acute care and specialty hospital facilities in six states. With the philosophy that all healthcare is local, Capella collaborates with each hospital's medical staff, board and community leadership to take care to the next level. The company has access to significant leadership and financial resources, investing in its family of hospitals to strengthen and expand services and facilities. The company was recognized by Modern Healthcare as one of the nation's fastest growing healthcare companies in both 2012 and 2013. For more information, visit the website at www.CapellaHealthcare.com.