Client Story
Achieving interoperability by connecting EHR systems and harmonizing data: The dbMotion Solution at PIH Health
PIH Health implements solution to seamlessly integrate patient data
PIH Health is a large health system that serves patients in the greater Los Angeles area, Orange County and the San Gabriel Valley. With three hospitals within the health system and many others in the area, it was vital that PIH Health adopted a data platform that enables the secure exchange of patient health information across multiple facilities and organizations.
A primary goal of PIH Health regarding the continuity of care it provides for its patients is to facilitate the seamless sharing and aggregation of patient data from different sources, allowing healthcare providers to access a comprehensive view of a patient’s longitudinal record. The dbMotion Solution integrates and harmonizes data from multiple systems and connects to the Carequality network, enabling clinicians to make better informed decisions, improve care coordination and enhance patient outcomes.
2.3M clinical/physician documents loaded
into dbMotion and made available to providers in acute and ambulatory settings.
Saved $700k annually
by successfully migrating data via dbMotion to expand Sunrise EHR to Good Samaritan Hospital.
Through Carequality, successfully established connections at 34 organizations in the southern California area.
Historical data loaded into dbMotion dating back 7.5 years
Following PIH Health’s acquisition of Good Samaritan Hospital, which previously used a non-Altera EHR system, plans were made to consolidate the clinical and physician documentation. Prior to the acquisition, these records were dispersed across various EHR systems within the health network, making access challenging, particularly at Good Samaritan Hospital. However, leveraging the CASE STUDY The dbMotion Solution at PIH Health: Achieving interoperability by connecting EHR systems and harmonizing data 2.3M clinical/physician documents loaded into dbMotion and made available to providers in acute and ambulatory settings. Saved $700k annually by successfully migrating data via dbMotion to expand Sunrise EHR to Good Samaritan Hospital. Through Carequality, successfully established connections at 34 organizations in the southern California area.Case Study capabilities of dbMotion, PIH Health successfully extracted historical data from the former EHR and seamlessly made it available within the Sunrise EHR system. This includes more than 2.3M pieces of clinical and physician documentation from Good Samaritan Hospital that have been seamlessly integrated into the Sunrise EHR at PIH Health, empowering healthcare providers with access to patients’ complete medical histories.
This data includes demographics, encounters, laboratory/microbiology and radiology results, and clinical (physician) documentation. Historical clinical and physician documentation are of particular importance for patient care because they provide a comprehensive view of a patient’s medical history. This information is critical for healthcare providers to make accurate diagnoses, as it can provide valuable insight into a patient’s health and help identify patterns and trends over time.
“The providers are easily able to access these documents from both the ambulatory setting and inpatient setting since it is part of the patient chart now. To be able to bring in that much data and documentation in an intuitive way is extremely valuable to our providers,” said Hendric Minassian, Sr. Manager Applications, PIH Health/Altera.
PIH Health achieved significant financial advantage by retiring the legacy nonAltera EHR and expanding Sunrise EHR system to incorporate Good Samaritan Hospital and the flexibility of the dbMotion solution. dbMotion played a crucial role in facilitating this cost-saving measure by enabling the seamless migration of data. By consolidating information into a single system, efficiency has been notably increased. Lastly, the historical patient data that was previously inaccessible has now become readily available to all clinicians, further enhancing the quality of care provided.
Extending PIH Health’s network of data sharing via Carequality
PIH Health went live on Carequality through the dbMotion solution in October 2022. The primary goal of Carequality is to facilitate seamless and secure sharing of health data, enabling caregivers to access and exchange patient information with a nationwide registry of healthcare providers regardless of the technology or system they use. By establishing a standardized approach, Carequality eliminates the need for point-to-point connections and complex interfaces-simplifying data exchange and reducing implementation barriers.
With the help of Carequality, PIH Health successfully established connections at 34 other organizations in the southern California area. The solution enables healthcare organizations to connect with other EHR vendors like Cerner, Epic, eClinicalWorks, etc., to obtain pertinent patient information.
“If a patient presents to our hospital, but at some point, they have been to Memorial Care Hospital, we can run a query in Carequality and receive information on the patient from their other encounters at other organizations,” said Minassian.
By leveraging the Carequality framework PIH Health has seen significant improvements in care coordination, patient outcomes, and data-exchange efficiency. It has helped overcome barriers to interoperability, enhances collaboration among healthcare providers and enables better-informed clinical decision-making by ensuring that relevant patient information is available at the point of care.
“The goal of these connections is to establish interoperability through a nationally sponsored network of organizations that are not using any of the Altera EHRs,” said Jason Fischer, CIO, PIH Health/Altera.
PIH Health uses dbMotion to capture impactful analytics
The dbMotion Clinical Analytics Gateway enabled PIH Health to bridge the internal dbMotion data repository with their external data warehouse and Clinical Analytics framework. This enables PIH Health to create its own Business Intelligence dashboards and scorecards that include data that comes from across the organization-including administrative, financial and workforce.
Clinical analytic dashboards and scorecards that PIH Health created include but are not limited to risk stratification dashboards, population health monitoring, registries, inpatient metrics and case management. This enables providers to explore the population cohort in which they were treating.
The future of dbMotion at PIH Health
PIH Health’s implementation of the dbMotion solution has been instrumental in integrating patient data across its network of healthcare facilities. By aggregating data from multiple sources, dbMotion has provided clinicians with a comprehensive view of patients’ medical histories, enabling informed decisionmaking, improved care coordination and enhanced patient outcomes. The addition of Carequality has further facilitated secure data sharing and exchange, enabling connections with numerous organizations and EHR brands, fostering interoperability and better-informed clinical decision-making.