Huntsville Hospital Health System Selects Caradigm® Health Information Exchange as Backbone for Integrated Care in Northern Alabama

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. and BELLEVUE, Wash., Dec. 6, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Huntsville Hospital Health System, the nation's fifth largest publicly owned healthcare organization, has selected the Caradigm Health Information Exchange (HIE), powered by Orion Health, to provide the backbone for integrated care across the community, with a vision to ultimately connect care across the entire northern Alabama region.

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Huntsville Hospital will be joined in the exchange by all of its affiliates – The Heart Center, Decatur Morgan Hospital, Helen Keller Hospital, Athens-Limestone Hospital, and Lawrence Medical Center – as well as Marshall Medical Centers and Cullman Regional Medical Center.

Huntsville Hospital will use the Caradigm HIE to aggregate patient and population data from across the care continuum, creating a rich transactional clinical data repository that community hospitals, physician clinics and other affiliated providers can leverage as members to streamline care coordination, improve care quality, and increase patient satisfaction. The solution also will enable Huntsville Hospital adopt population health strategies that align with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Meaningful Use initiative.

"With the changes taking place in healthcare, we felt it was critical for Huntsville Hospital to select a foundational solution that could connect across all of northern Alabama," said David Spillers, CEO of Huntsville Hospital Health System. "As we prepare for Regional Care Organizations in Alabama, our goal is to provide clinicians and patients with a complete view of patient history, regardless of the care setting or the type of provider visited or EMR used."

Affiliated physicians, other providers and smaller hospitals throughout the Huntsville community use disparate, disconnected EMR systems. Consequently, they often lack access to the latest patient data, which causes delays and disruptions in clinical workflows.  The Caradigm HIE provides secure, online access to patient records for authorized healthcare providers within the region, offering a shared view of the patient to providers regardless of the type of EMR system used, or even if they don't use an EMR system. Providing clinicians across the Huntsville community with access to a patient's complete, up-to-date history will help the health system avoid duplicate or unnecessary procedures and tests, reduce medical errors and save costs.

The Caradigm HIE also will help Huntsville qualify for CMS Meaningful Use incentives by providing support for secure messaging, notifications, and patient access to records through a patient portal. In addition, the new HIE will better position Huntsville and its regional affiliates to take advantage of Value-Based Purchasing, another CMS quality-care initiative.

Rick Corn, Huntsville Hospital CIO, added, "What we recognized early in this project was an opportunity to use federal EMR incentives to create a strategic partnership for the future. Caradigm not only provided the right products but also demonstrated long-term commitment to our effort."

About Huntsville Hospital Health System

Huntsville Hospital is a 941-bed hospital that was established in Huntsville, Alabama in 1895. A community-based, not-for-profit institution, Huntsville Hospital is the second largest hospital in Alabama and the fifth largest publicly owned hospital system in the nation. Huntsville Hospital employs 7,000 employees and has a medical staff of more than 750 physicians. Huntsville Hospital serves as the major referral hospital and trauma center for patients throughout the Tennessee Valley and is a teaching facility for UAB's Family Practice and Internal Medicine Residency Programs. The hospital also operates Huntsville Hospital for Women & Children, one of only three pediatric hospitals in the state, and Madison Hospital. Affiliates of Huntsville Hospital include the Athens-Limestone Hospital, Helen Keller Hospital in Sheffield, Red Bay Hospital, Decatur Morgan Hospital, Lawrence Medical Center in Moulton, The Heart Center Inc. of Huntsville and a multi-specialty physician network. Huntsville Hospital also owns a 70-bed rehabilitation hospital managed by HealthSouth. Huntsville Hospital is governed by volunteers through the Health Care Authority of the City of Huntsville.

About Caradigm

Caradigm is a healthcare analytics and population health company dedicated to helping organizations improve care, reduce costs and manage risk. Caradigm analytics solutions provide insight into patients, populations and performance, enabling healthcare organizations to understand their clinical and financial risk and identify the actions needed to address it. Caradigm population health solutions enable teams to deliver the appropriate care to patients through effective coordination and patient engagement, helping to improve outcomes and financial results. The key to Caradigm analytics and population health solutions is a rich set of clinical, operational and financial data delivered to healthcare professionals within their workflows in near-real time. This data asset serves as the foundation for a growing number of innovative healthcare applications developed by Caradigm and industry partners, providing rapid incremental value to customers.

SOURCE Caradigm