Critical Access Hospitals

You and your colleagues are dedicated to the healthcare needs of your community, which includes your neighbors, friends, and family members. Part of delivering high-quality care is having a thorough understanding of each patient’s medical history. This, however, can be challenging when patients have recently traveled to other parts of Colorado for specialty or emergent care.

The CORHIO health information exchange (HIE) is a statewide network for secure medical records sharing among qualified healthcare providers. It includes data such as lab results, radiology reports, consult notes, problem lists, allergies, and admit, discharge and transfer (ADT) information.

NEW! No Fees Ever for Critical Access Hospitals and Rural Health Clinics

Our commitment to the rural community is to provide Health Information Exchange services to increase continuity of care. This means all our services will be free forever for all Critical Access Hospitals and Rural Health Clinics in Colorado starting Jan. 1, 2023. Learn more. 

 

 

Accessing Patient Data From Other Care Providers

Whether your patients are transferred to other Colorado hospitals or need to visit another hospital while traveling to other parts of the state, knowing the details of those visits can be crucial for follow-up or continuation of care once the patient returns home. The CORHIO health information exchange network gives your clinical staff secure access to patient clinical information from hospitals, imaging centers and labs across the state. You can also use the network for better data sharing within your local system of care, such as between a clinic and the hospital.

Access to the CORHIO network can be done via a secure web-based portal, PatientCare 360®. Or you can receive results directly in the patient record via electronic health record (EHR) integration.

Sending Your Data Into the HIE

Your hospital can become a data sender, which means your test results, consult notes, orders, procedures and more will be available in the network to other providers across the state. This helps reduce avoidable readmissions and could help your hospital qualify for EHR Incentive Program payments.

CORHIO works with your IT staff to build HL7 interfaces that connect your clinical information systems to the HIE network. We then route appropriate information to providers’ EHR systems or make it accessible through our query-based web portal PatientCare 360®. For providers receiving data through their EHR, we configure their interface and accommodate their data filtering requests so your staff can focus resources elsewhere.

Benefits of Health Information Exchange

HIE is the secure, electronic process of sharing patients' clinical information with physicians and other healthcare providers to improve quality of care and practice efficiencies. HIE has been documented to benefit hospitals in many ways including:

  • Cost-efficient data exchange with physicians and other clinicians (avoid building costly point-to-point interfaces)
  • Streamlined access to patient history information, especially important for emergency departments and outpatient clinics
  • Reduced administrative and overhead costs
  • Reduced costs from faxing and mailing paper files
  • HIPAA-compliant data sharing with other providers
  • Improved quality and coordination of patient care

What our participants are saying:

“This HIE 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.”

Michael Archuleta
Director of Information Technology
Mount San Rafael Hospital