Health-e-MedRecord and CORHIO Partner on Statewide Platform to Ensure Patient Wishes are Respected

Electronic directives will replace guesswork and family members being forced to make decisions.

Health-e-MedRecord (HEMR), a software solution designed to enhance electronic health records, and CORHIO have announced their partnership, which will allow CORHIO to implement HEMR’s Medcordance Advance Care Planning platform, designed to ensure patients’ treatment wishes are honored during medical emergencies.

Patients are often unable to speak for themselves in such emergencies, leaving family members or physicians to make critical decisions, possibly without fully understanding a patient’s desires. Medcordance allows secure sharing of, Advance Health Care Directives, such as living wills, “Do Not Resuscitate” orders and other documents concerning a patient’s treatment wishes during transitions of care. Medcordance also allows sharing of documents among family members and caregivers at the patient’s request.

“I’m excited about the CORHIO-HEMR partnership, which will provide real-time access to Colorado MOST and other Advance Care Planning forms,” said HEMR CEO and founder Dr. Carlo Reyes, a board-certified emergency physician, pediatrician and a health care attorney. ”Both companies recognize that providers need an intuitive clinical process that accommodates current workflows and incentivizes improving patient access to palliative care and end-of-life counseling.”

The partnership between HEMR and CORHIO will allow providers across the delivery continuum in Colorado to securely share patients’ MOST forms, Colorado’s version of the POLST form (www.polst.org), created to encourage patients with serious illnesses to express their desires for care in the form of a medical order. When patients are well, they are urged to make -- and document -- these decisions to ensure their wishes are known and honored.

“Making patients’ Advance Care Planning wishes available to all providers in the CORHIO network will improve clinical decision-making, enhance participation in accountable care and value-based payment models and take this difficult burden off of family members in a time of crisis,” said Morgan Honea, CEO of CORHIO. “CORHIO is constantly moving the process of health information exchange forward in Colorado, and this partnership with Health-e-MedRecord is a major milestone in our development.”