Urgent Care Clinic in Durango First to Connect to CORHIO

Two locations, including New Mexico and Colorado, using CORHIO data to improve workflow.

Durango Urgent Care, an 11-provider after-hours community urgent care clinic, is now connected to the CORHIO network. This is the first urgent care clinic to connect to CORHIO’s health information exchange (HIE). Their second location, Aztec Urgent Care in Aztec, New Mexico, is also accessing some patient data via the CORHIO network because their labs are processed at Mercy Regional Medical Center in Durango. Mercy Regional Medical Center, part of the Centura Health system, has been connected to CORHIO for more than two years, so the hospital’s lab results are immediately available to providers outside of the hospital’s electronic health record system who are participating in CORHIO’s network.

Noticeable Improvements to Workflow

Holly Andersen, RN, Clinical Coordinator for Durango and Aztec Urgent Care, is leading the HIE training efforts to help her providers and care staff with CORHIO. “We love CORHIO. Just like any new system, we had to get everyone trained, but it definitely does improve our workflow,” she said.

Prior to connecting to CORHIO’s network, the staff at Durango Urgent Care and Aztec Urgent Care relied on finding patient test results among a stack of paper faxes sent from Mercy Regional Medical Center. “What we were depending on before is Mercy would send out broadcasts onto our fax machine of test results,” said Andersen. “But only 60-70% of test results came through that way, so virtually we had to look up our own test results one test at a time through the MEDITECH system. It was creating a lot of extra busy work for the clinical staff, whereas with CORHIO everything drops into a clinical in-box, we do a quick print out, and it’s done. Overall, the system is much easier for us to use.”

Because tracking down test results for that day’s patient list is the clinical staff’s first priority for the day, it’s crucial that it goes smoothly. Delays in finding this information could cause back-ups for those patients coming in for care at the beginning of the day.

“We have an internal system that we use to track labs and X-ray results to ensure that nothing falls through the cracks and we don’t miss any results,” said Andersen. “One of the first things we do each day is the clinical staff goes to the day’s set of charts and matches those up with any tests we’ve ordered, print out results from the system, match those up with the chart and make sure we have everything accounted for.”

CORHIO Utilization to Grow Along With Organization

At this time, Durango Urgent Care and Aztec Urgent Care are primarily using a paper-based system for patient records, but are in the process of planning for EHR adoption. They are accessing the clinical data on the CORHIO network via PatientCare 360®, which is a secure, Web-based portal.  “We still have paper charts but I’m hoping that will change in the next year or two,” said Andersen. “We chose PatientCare 360 to start off with because in a year or so, when we do go live with an EHR, we’ve already got that piece in place and it will be easier to integrate.”

In addition, the two urgent care facilities are also growing their service offerings to include occupational medical services such as drug testing, worker’s compensation services, and pre-employment screenings. They look forward to using CORHIO to assist with test results in the future when these services are in full swing.