Surescripts Leverages Interoperable Network to Deliver Patient Clinical History to Providers at the Point Of Care

Increasing Number of Providers Across the Country Choose Surescripts Record Locator & Exchange to Obtain a More Complete View of Patient History Directly in EHR Workflow

Surescripts is tapping the strength of its interoperable network, including access to clinical records for more than 230 million patients, to provide a growing group of clinicians nationwide with actionable patient intelligence directly in their electronic health record (EHR).

The Surescripts Network Alliance® has expanded the reach of Surescripts Record Locator & Exchange to 40 health systems representing 295 hospitals across the country. This means that clinicians working in these hospitals have access to clinical records for patients who visit any connected health system—plus the 600,000 healthcare providers across 35,000 clinics and 1,250 hospitals included in Carequality. In 2017, more than 51,000 clinicians utilizing Surescripts Record Locator & Exchange located 26.4 million documents explaining where patients had previously received care. And they exchanged four million clinical records during the last three months of the year alone. 

“In an industry focused on value and quality, Surescripts plays a critical role in giving healthcare professionals the ability to both locate and exchange patient records to make safer and better informed care decisions,” said Tom Skelton, Chief Executive Officer of Surescripts. “The progress achieved across the Surescripts Network Alliance in 2017 marks a critical milestone in advancing the nation’s interoperability goals outlined by ONC in the Shared Nationwide Interoperability Roadmap.”

Successfully delivering past care locations and summaries from outside a given region or health system is no small task. It requires the strong and rapidly expanding cross-market collaboration that the Surescripts Network Alliance has forged over its 16 years as a neutral, independent organization operating a secure nationwide network for interoperable health data exchange.

Today, the Surescripts Network Alliance includes virtually all electronic health records (EHR) companies, pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), pharmacies and clinicians, and an increasing number of health plans, long-term care and specialty pharmacy organizations, who collectively transmit nearly 13 billion transactions via the network annually, including nearly five million e-prescriptions every day.

From physician offices to hospitals to outpatient care centers and home services, Sutter Health cares for more than three million people throughout Northern California. After going live with Record Locator & Exchange in 2017, Sutter Health immediately noted an increase in clinical document exchange. Today, according to a clinical study of Sutter’s emergency services, Surescripts Record Locator & Exchange is one of Sutter Health’s top clinical document trading partners representing nearly 50 percent of its total non-Epic patient link sources.

In the same clinical study, the health system also noted that of the nearly 50 percent of patients with new external clinical documents available, 30 percent of clinicians acted on drug-drug and drug-allergy interaction alerts by modifying or cancelling the prescription. This is evidence of how access to more complete patient data can help healthcare professionals better inform their decisions at the point of care.

“Surescripts Record Locator & Exchange is a key component of our interoperability strategy,” said Steven R. Lane, M.D., Clinical Informatics Director for Privacy, Information Security and Interoperability at Sutter Health. “It gives us the advantage of automation and the opportunity to use the Carequality framework, which immediately expands our access to records from those past care encounters.”

Surescripts Record Locator & Exchange leverages the Carequality Interoperability Framework which provides a common set of legal, technical and policy rules for data sharing across locations, settings, networks and technology platforms.

“Carequality’s goal is to quickly scale healthcare interoperability and make it easily accessible to providers nationwide,” said Dave Cassel, Vice President of Carequality. “Record location with a national scope plays an important role, and by partnering with Carequality implementers like Surescripts, we are reaching critical mass.”

Some of the health systems that recently went live with Record Locator & Exchange to gain easy access to nationwide clinical records include:

Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin is one of the nation's top pediatric hospitals, ranked in all ten specialties reviewed by U.S News & World Report. With more than 500 pediatric-trained doctors who see kids of all ages for everything from routine checkups to serious procedures, Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin complements its high quality clinical care with robust community support programs that help keep kids safe and healthy.

Denver Health is an integrated healthcare system serving as a model “safety net” institution and providing level-one care for all patients, regardless of their ability to pay. One quarter of all Denver residents—or approximately 150,000 people—are Denver Health patients.

Martin Health System is a Florida-based not-for-profit community-based healthcare organization comprising three hospitals, one MediCenter, a freestanding emergency center and numerous outpatient centers and clinics. It offers preventive, primary and acute hospital care, as well as cancer care, a heart center, wellness and rehabilitation services.  

Ohio State University Medical Center cares for more than one million patients each year, has the only primary academic medical center and adult transplant centers in central Ohio and has more than 1,000 active research studies in virtually every specialty.

Yale New Haven Health is Connecticut's leading healthcare system committed to integrated, high value, patient-centered care. It comprises Bridgeport, Greenwich, Lawrence + Memorial, Yale New Haven and Westerly hospitals, as well as Northeast Medical Group, a physician foundation of primary care and medical specialists.

To learn more about Record Locator & Exchange (formerly National Record Locator Service), visit Surescripts and watch our video.