Cook Children's Health Care System of Fort Worth, TX, is teaming with athenahealth and Microsoft to offer revenue-cycle management and EMR services to outside pediatricians while also building a platform for clinical data exchange with an eye toward improving pediatric care nationwide.
The health system will provide the athenaClinicals EMR and athenaCollector RCM service to the 350 employed providers in the Cook Children's Physicians Network, and also resell both products within its PedsPal purchasing organization that includes 1,100 physicians in 22 states. Additionally, Cook will offer virtual consultations with its pediatric subspecialists to primary-care physicians nationwide, Healthcare IT News reports.
Microsoft is providing the Amalga Unified Intelligence System 2009 data aggregation platform to help Cook Children's Health Care System gather information from its hospitals, physicians network, health plan and home-health network. Patients will be able to store records on the Microsoft HealthVault platform for personal health records.
The New York Times reports that Cook also will use the technology in a prototype small physician practice called the Innovation Clinic, which will emphasize preventive care for 2,000 to 3,000 patients on Medicaid.
For more details on these IT plans at Cook Children's:
- read the Healthcare IT News story
- check out this New York Times blog post