A widowed 85-year-old male is in transport to the emergency room for a fractured hip after being found dazed and semi-oriented at home by a visiting neighbor. The triage nurse receives the emergency medical service (EMS) phone call that the patient is 20-minutes out. The nurse uses the patient’s name and other identifiers to search within the state’s information-network record-locator service to access essential information. The nurse finds one unique patient, based on the EMS-reported patient name and address. After logging into the information network for HIE, the emergency-room nurse views information from the patient’s primary-care physician and cardiologist, the patient’s pharmacy, the public-health registry, the laboratory results on his last INR and chemistry, and hematology results. An old hospital record is located and used to help prepare for the patient. On his arrival, the nurse and the emergency physician find the patient unable to state allergies and some of his medications, so they use HIE information to verify past history. The nurse verifies the information with the patient and uses the provider-data repository to contact the pharmacy on recent dosing protocols for the patient’s anticoagulant. They are able to complete assessments, determine the patient’s current status, and route the patient to the radiology department for additional testing.
What is the standard healthcare information the nurse will be able to find through the health information exchange?
What are the benefits of using a HIE and what are the challenges?
What types of services could the triage nurse and emergency physician use after accessing the HIE?