Geisinger Health System is pressing forward in using patient data in real time, according to John Kravitz, senior vice president and CIO of the organization.
In a recent interview with Healthcare Informatics, Kravitz says one of the Danville, Pennsylvania-based provider's new data projects, CareGaps, will roll out by September or October. Patients will be handed a tablet computer in the waiting room where they will be surveyed about chronic diseases, with the information going automatically into the electronic health record before their doctor visit. The enterprise data warehouse already flags needed blood work or other tests in that system.
Geisinger will have programs available for collecting data in the waiting room from patients with various chronic illnesses such as congestive heart failure, asthma and rheumatoid arthritis, Kravitz says. Another priority project, called SuperNote, will make the most important patient data readily visible to physicians in the EHR, he adds.
Kravitz, who became Geisinger's CIO four months ago, says putting a governance structure in place has been vital to the health system's data efforts. He says that's especailly important because the number of applications has ballooned over the years.
He adds that he is undertaking a service management structure for the organization, with his 800-member IT department working to catalog the services it provides. His personal goal is to boost efficiency and slash expenses by 5 percent.
Eric Newman, M.D., vice chairman for clinical innovations in Geisinger's division of medicine, previously described to FierceHealthIT how Geisinger is bringing in multiple data streams to deliver the most necessary information to different members of the care team in its population health efforts. And its focus on care gaps is just one of its projects aimed at applying data to clinical care, Chief Data Officer Nicholas Marko has previously said.
To learn more:
- read the interview