QHN Improves Patient and Population Health Management with The Advisory Board Company

WASHINGTON, Feb. 22, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Long a pioneer in regional health information exchange (HIE) development, Quality Health Network (QHN) is developing a "registry of registries," powered by The Advisory Board Company's Crimson Care Registry™, for QHN's participants in 20 western Colorado counties. 

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QHN, a not-for-profit quality-improvement collaborative located in Grand Junction, Colorado, will provide participating health care providers with new, richly layered care registry services.  The resulting data will range from top-level analytics on more than 450,000 patients in the Western Colorado medical trade area down to each medical practice's own registry of patients -- and many levels in between. 

"Crimson Care Registry will help QHN participant health care providers optimize individual patient visits as well as improve overall delivery of care through population health management," said Kristin Wilson, MD, Project Director-Clinical Quality Improvement, QHN.

QHN is rapidly expanding throughout Western Colorado with more than 175 health care facilities currently utilizing its services.  QHN is a member of the Colorado Beacon Consortium -- one of 17 communities designated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and funded by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act within the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) to model best practices in the use of Health Information Technology. 

QHN's quality improvement-focused efforts facilitate the exchange of data by its participants to support population health management, care coordination, pay-for-performance, and other quality improvement initiatives. 

"The robust registry functionality of the Crimson Care Registry gives a 360-degree view of the patient at the point of care and beyond," said Candice Talkington, Quality Improvement Advisor with the Colorado Beacon Consortium Practice Transformation Team.  "Patient engagement is essential to improvement in health care.  This tool puts the patient and the primary care team in the driver's seat."

"One of the key strategies for controlling health care costs is to focus on prevention, screening, and chronic disease management for all patients," said David Morin, General Manager, Crimson Care Registry at The Advisory Board Company, a research, technology, and consulting firm serving a membership of more than 2,900 of the world's leading health care organizations. 

"Our work with QHN will enable western Colorado providers to take a more comprehensive approach to patient management, elevating the performance of the entire care team with an all-patient, all-problem, all-payer registry that can provide the necessary level of visibility to truly drive quality," Morin added. 

For more information on care registry services from The Advisory Board Company, please visit the Crimson Care Registry homepage of the Advisory.com website.  There, hospital and health system executives may register for the free Webconference, "Are You Prepared to Manage Chronic Patients in the Ambulatory Setting?" on Wednesday, March 7 at 1 p.m. EST.

About Quality Health Network
QHN began live data exchange operations in the fall of 2005 and provides connectivity for health care providers in 20 western Colorado counties.  QHN's network collects and distributes data to and from diverse types of healthcare providers including acute care, urgent care, long-term care, reference labs, surgical centers, behavioral health programs, public health agencies, pharmacies, and independent physician practices.  QHN member organizations include more than 1,417 active online healthcare users and more than 1,065 pharmacies, all of whom are connected via the QHN network.  

About The Advisory Board Company
The Advisory Board Company is a global research, technology, and consulting firm partnering with 125,000 leaders in 3,200 organizations across health care and higher education.  Through its innovative membership model, the firm collaborates with executives and their teams to elevate performance and solve their most pressing challenges.  The company provides strategic guidance, actionable insights, web-based software solutions, and comprehensive implementation and management services.  Through its Crimson offerings, The Advisory Board Company collaborates with health care providers dedicated to strengthening hospital-physician alignment, coordination among care settings, and overall clinical performance.  Combining business intelligence technology with best practice implementation, Crimson offerings are developed with hospitals, health systems, physicians, and other practitioners seeking improved alignment on key clinical, operational and strategic goals.  Crimson currently supports more than 500 individual hospitals, representing over 300,000 physicians.  For more information about The Advisory Board Company, visit The Advisory Board Company's new website, http://www.advisory.com.

SOURCE The Advisory Board Company