MD-IT Helps Establish National Effort to Accelerate Secure Electronic Exchange of Medical Records

Health care is the largest industry in the US unable to routinely send and receive information over the internet. Due to concerns about security and privacy of personal health information (PHI), virtually all of the millions of patient records exchanged among providers are faxed or mailed. Records that originate as digital files end up as less useful paper records when received. Many more patient records are never sent due to this inefficient means of information sharing.

Boulder, CO (PRWEB) November 4, 2009 -- MD-IT announced today that it is a charter member of a new industry consortium formed to make it easier for physicians and other authorized persons to exchange electronic health information required for patient care.

Health care is the largest industry in the US unable to routinely send and receive information over the internet. Due to concerns about security and privacy of personal health information (PHI), virtually all of the millions of patient records exchanged among providers are faxed or mailed. Records that originate as digital files end up as less useful paper records when received. Many more patient records are never sent due to this inefficient means of information sharing.

Parodoxically, each day half a million patient records are distributed electronically through secure networks to hospitals, physicians and other care providers by medical transcription service organizations (MTSOs), companies that produce narrative patient notes from physician dictation. Distribution is currently limited, however, to MTSOs sending completed records to their own clients. The new initiative will link together MTSO platforms, creating a national infrastructure for exchanging health care information quickly and at nominal cost.

The Medical Transcription Service Consortium (MTSC) – formed by ICSA Labs, an independent division of Verizon Business, and the Medical Transcription Industry Association (MTIA) – will develop a common framework for the seamless and secure exchange of PHI among consortium members and their health care clients. The new framework will support structured narrative notes, which read like a text document but include XML tags that unlock valuable data, enabling both the narrative note and clinical data to be imported into an electronic medical record.

Charter members of the consortium, in addition to MD-IT, include leading MTSOs MedQuist, MxSecure, Sten-Tel, and Webmedx, plus Verizon Business, which will develop the new IT platform using security best practices.

“While our clients can exchange information today with other practices on the MD-IT network, it is exciting that within a few months, they will be able to send and receive records among 2,500 hospitals and 375,000 physicians nationwide who are current clients of consortium members,” said Robin Daigh, a vice president with MD-IT. “The cost is very affordable, with monthly fees comparable to those for electronic fax services, and requiring only a PC with internet connectivity for access to the network. We have found that our clients can save money overall by eliminating the current labor-intensive process of faxing and mailing.”

“The consortium holds the potential to rapidly accelerate the exchange of electronic records from tens of thousands of records to millions of records per month,” noted Thomas Carson, president of MD-IT. “Consortium members produce an estimated 200 million narrative patient notes annually and have over 2.5 billion patient records in electronic archive. This is a great way to kick start the ambitious goal of having all health care providers connected through a secure digital network.”

About MD-IT
MD-IT provides medical documentation software and services to 7,000 physicians and clinicians in over 900 medical practices and hospitals throughout the United States. The company combines the benefits of local office ownership with the resources of a national company to offer personalized service supported by leading technology. The privately-held company is located in Boulder, CO, with regional offices in Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Oregon, Texas, and Washington. Additional information can be found at www.md-it.com.

Contacts

Thomas Carson
President and CEO, MD-IT   
tcarson (at) md-it (dot) com   
(303) 301-0411   

Robin Daigh
Vice President, MD-IT
rdaigh (at) md-it (dot) com
(303) 301-0407

###