Kaiser Permanente

Kaiser Permanente

Kaiser Permanente and four other top U.S. health systems -- Mayo Clinic, Group Health Cooperative, Intermountain Healthcare and Geisinger Health System -- said Wednesday they plan to launch a consortium to share patient-specific data and “pioneer the effective connectivity of electronic patient information.”
Although details are few, the five integrated health care systems -- each often considered a national model in various ways -- say the first exchange of data is planned “in the next year.”
Kaiser’s primary bailiwick is California, although it has operations in nine states and the District of Columbia. The Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, Pennsylvania’s Geisinger, Seattle’s Group Health and Utah’s Intermountain give the initiative a broad national footprint.
Participants say the project’s goal is to “demonstrate better and safer care with better data availability.” If for example, a Kaiser enrollee traveled to Minnesota and needed care, patient-specific data could be electronically exchanged through the proposed system.
The systems also say they want to help achieve health information “interoperability,” meaning easy sharing of data across different IT platforms, while protecting privacy and data security, and using the latest national IT standards.
“We have all reached the same important conclusion about (the importance of) linking and sharing patient-specific data,” George Halvorson, Kaiser’s chairman and CEO, said in the April 6 statement.
Sources: http://www.bizjournals.com

Kaiser Permanente