Progressive Rural Hospital Now Sending Data into CORHIO HIE

Mt. San Rafael Hospital in Trinidad is sending important clinical data into the Community Health Record to improve care in their community and statewide.

Mt. San Rafael Hospital is a 25-bed critical access hospital in Trinidad, close to the New Mexico border. The hospital and their neighboring clinic are vital in the healthcare of residents of the area. The hospital was recently awarded with Healthcare’s Most Wired award from CHIME and the American Hospital Association. This month, Mt. San Rafael started sending clinical data into the CORHIO Community Health Record, including laboratory results and admit, discharge, and transfer (ADT) notifications. Now any CORHIO participant can access the data via the PatientCare 360® web portal or through their electronic health record (EHR) system.*

Same Campus, Different EHRs

Despite their close proximity on the same campus, the hospital and clinic are on two separate electronic health record (EHR) systems, so sharing medical records is a challenge. This was the catalyst for the organization to join the CORHIO network and use advanced technology to share records. Now that the hospital is sending data into the HIE, the clinic will soon implement the Patient Care 360 portal so staff can access Mt. San Rafael Hospital data and data from other hospitals in the state.

“When we scoped this project out, we basically asked ourselves how we could utilize the HIE to send our results and how we could incorporate our ambulatory EHR into the mix,” says Michael Archuleta, Director of Information Technology at Mt. San Rafael Hospital. “Our clinic uses a different EHR than the hospital so there’s no connectivity and faxing or delivering results can take days or weeks. With HIE, lab results are being sent real-time once our in-house labs are finalized.”

Director of IT Taking Innovative Approach to HIE

Michael Archuleta is steering the project for both the hospital and clinic. “Our number one priority is patient care. We expect the HIE to improve medication distribution, reduce medical errors, improve public health reporting, and cut down on redundant testing. The patient information we’ll have access to will now be easier to access and we’ll spend less time chasing down charts,” he says. “We want to go electronic and paperless to increase efficiencies, overall patient care, and patient satisfaction.”

“This project is extremely beneficial to the overall performance and success of the organization, especially taking into consideration that we are such a small critical access hospital. Implementing this high-tech solution will allow our organization to further help assist our patients while also assuring accuracy,” says Archuleta. “We are ahead of the game compared to many small hospitals and we’re very excited and proud to bring this to our community.”

Just Scratching the Surface

Archuleta and the hospital have big plans to continue the partnership with CORHIO, including the hospital sending pathology results and transcription and radiology reports into the HIE. And being so close to the New Mexico border means patients cross state lines all the time and get care in both states.

“The way HIEs are combining and sharing data, I would love for New Mexico providers to get our data,” says Archuleta. “HIE is such an important concept – it reduces costs and improves overall patient care because when test results are available in the system, providers don’t need to repeat tests. There’s so many great benefits that this HIE has – literally the sky’s the limit as long as we keep moving forward. Especially if we can collaborate more with different states to share our information. It’s a game changer and we’re extremely proud to be a member of CORHIO.”

*To receive Mt. San Rafael Hospital results into your EHR, please contact your HIE representative.

Pictured Left to Right: Jimmie Romero, Michael Archuleta, Kelly Meyers, Kenny Rivera, and Ross Hallihan