Helping Care Teams on the Front Lines: Providence St. Joseph Health

Providence St. Joseph Health (PSJH) has been leveraging InterSystems HealthShare® and Health Insight to increase the visibility of COVID-19 diagnoses among the healthcare team. In response to the pandemic, the Health Information Exchange (HIE) team at PSJH rapidly implemented two new ways to help physicians on the front line fight and manage the COVID-19 crisis by alerting them of patients who have tested positive for COVID-19.

According to Theo Siagian, Executive Director of Health Information Exchange and Interoperability, when physicians log in to PSJH’s ShareVue (HealthShare Clinical Viewer rebranded), they now see a COVID-19 indicator in the patient banner alerting them that the patient tested positive for COVID-19 within the past 30 days. When they click on the patient-specific alert, a popup appears with additional details, such as when and where the patient was tested for the virus.

In the Unified Care Record, physicians will find a complete history of all COVID-19 tests, both positive and negative, for each patient on the ShareVue “Advance Care Planning” tab. Also, Primary Care Physicians in the network have the option on ShareVue to opt in easily to receive email alerts for their patients receiving COVID-19 lab tests and results. An executive dashboard displays these results geographically.

The PSJH HIE, accessed via the ShareVue portal, provides valuable patient data to providers and the organization. PSJH operates across seven states, with nearly 4,200 California, Texas, and Alaska providers, laboratories, and ancillary partners contributing to the HIE.

There are also several other projects underway that will provide critical COVID-19 information to the physicians and care teams who need it.

Ground Zero for COVID-19 Patients in the United States

Providence is the fourth largest health system in the U.S. with 51 hospitals and 1,085 clinics. Providence Regional Medical Center Everett, in Washington state, admitted and treated the first patient diagnosed with COVID-19 in the U.S. Providence quickly responded with tools and resources to help its hospitals and care teams respond to the massive influx of COVID-19 positive patients. The organization became a benchmark for many other U.S. healthcare organizations as the novel coronavirus (nCoV2) spread.

Learn More:

• Providence HIE
• “Faster, Better Together: Health System Lessons Learned in Tackling COVID-19,”, a HIMSS Learning webinar featuring Dr. Amy Compton-Phillips, Executive Vice President and Chief Clinical Officer,who discusses the Providence experience and response to the first U.S. case of COVID-19.
• Providence Chat Bot, a consumer-facing COVID-19 assessment tool
• Providence Telehealth and Virtual Express Care Services

^{This story originally appeared the May 8, 2020 - HealthShare Connections News Flash No.1: COVID-19 Pandemic newsletter}