Wright State Research Institute helps agency automate medical records

((Contributed by Timothy R. Gaffney))

Talk about paperwork.

The Social Security Administration’s disability program received more than 3 million disability applications in 2010, prompting the agency to send out an estimated 15 million requests for medical information from health care providers–almost all of it on paper.

The crush of paperwork and the time lost simply waiting for records led to more than three months on average for the federal agency to process an initial disability application. Some individual cases take much longer. That’s time wasted for patients and taxpayers alike.

Information technology should be able to slash the time lag with automation and electronic records. And so it is, as the Social Security Administration moves forward with projects to set up electronic health information exchanges as part of its Medical Evidence Gathering and Analysis through Health Information Technology (MEGAHIT) program.

The Wright State Research Institute, in collaboration with the Boonshoft School of Medicine’s Center for Healthy Communities, is developing one such project under a $999,000 Social Security Administration contract. It’s one of 13 projects around the country the agency is funding.

Creating an electronic health information exchange takes more than slapping a medical form on a scanner. Health care providers large and small keep patient records in different ways, some on paper and some in various electronic formats. Getting them to exchange data accurately and securely with the Social Security Administration across a nationwide computer network takes IT resources that all but the largest providers lack.

WSRI’s job is to develop an electronic information exchange that can fetch data needed by the Social Security Administration from a health care provider’s database and put it into a standard Social Security form called a Continuity of Care Document. Then, it must be able to transmit the record securely to the agency over the digital National Health Information Network.

“When the Social Security Administration is doing its disability determination process, it will send to us an electronic request for a patient’s health record, and then electronically we will pull the health records from the health care providers and send the agency an electronic health record,” said Mark Wysong, WSRI’s program director.

The Social Security Administration believes the new system will shrink the time it takes to receive medical evidence from weeks or months to minutes or seconds.

WSRI is working with two health care providers to develop its exchange. One is Wright State Physicians, a group of doctors affiliated with the Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine. The other is Evergreen Family Medicine in Roseburg, Ore. The number will grow as WSRI completes and proves the exchange.

“Once this contract is over, we will have several different electronic health care practices that will be tied into the health information exchange that we’re building,” Wysong said.

Service fees should make the exchange a revenue source for the growing, four-year-old research institute, which is a part of Wright State University.

WSRI has a team of nine people working on the health information exchange. It’s building on earlier work by the School of Medicine’s Center for Healthy Communities led by Katherine Cauley, Ph.D., community health professor and the center’s director.

“They were the original contract winner,” Wysong said. “It makes sense for us to team up with them because they’re more focused on community health. Our organization is really more suited to large-scale information technology projects.”