Penrose Hospital’s Emergency Department Uses High-Tech Systems to Deliver High-Quality Care

Penrose Hospital, located in the heart of Colorado Springs and part of Centura Health, has participated in the CORHIO health information exchange (HIE) since 2011. The hospital has a real-time, electronic connection to the CORHIO network, which allows community healthcare providers to access information on shared patients when coordinated care is delivered in outpatient settings such as physician offices and skilled nursing centers.

In March of 2014, Penrose Hospital expanded its participation with CORHIO by implementing HIE access in the Emergency Department (ED). Authorized ED staff access the HIE with PatientCare 360®, a secure, Web-based tool that allows physicians and other authorized clinical care providers to access a patient’s recent medical history for care provided outside the hospital’s system. This information is especially helpful for patients unable to communicate as a result of illness or injury, and patients with complex care needs and chronic conditions.

“For patients that are complicated and may not know their entire history, having another source of information is incredibly helpful,” says Dr. Jack Sharon, an emergency physician and Chief of Staff at Penrose St. Francis Health Services. “In our town, we’ve basically got two hospital systems – we’re on different electronic medical records that don’t overlap. However, going through CORHIO I can see what workups have been done at the other facility and that helps me tailor the workup I need to do on the patient here. If I see a patient that has abnormal labs, for example, and they can’t tell me if they’ve been in the other hospital, and that information is in CORHIO, I can look and see that their white count was low a month ago. If their finding today is not new, that means their renal function hasn’t changed and that’s incredibly helpful. CORHIO really does help move healthcare forward.”

CORHIO is proud to support Penrose Hospital and its affiliated healthcare providers with advanced HIE services that improve care for patients in the Colorado Springs area.