A Message from Your Doctor
We are pleased to inform you that we are participating in an innovative program that will improve the health care delivered to you. It will also make office visits easier and more convenient for you. Starting in June 2008, the Central Georgia Health Network (CGHN) member physicians’ offices in Middle Georgia will begin using Electronic Medical Records (EMR) in their offices. These EMRs will be used in place of the paper charts currently used.
In addition, we are embarking on an exciting initiative to link your physicians’ offices to each other through the Central Georgia Health Exchange (CGHE). This will allow your doctors to serve you better by having your latest up to date information when making important decisions about your health and enable us to provide you with even higher quality of care. It can also reduce the number of times you are requested to complete forms with the same information.
eHX Record
The eHX Record is a way your doctor can use a computer to share certain vital information from your EMR Chart with other healthcare providers. Until now, your doctor’s office shared this vital information by mail, fax, or phone. This could take a lot of time and sometimes doctors did not get all the information they may have wanted. This could have also resulted in tests or exams being repeated or in time consuming delays while the vital information was obtained. The eHX Record will make this process faster, easier and safer.
As an example, if you have an eHX Record, doctors at The Medical Center of Central Georgia will be able to see a summary of your vital health information if you are admitted to the emergency room in the middle of the night. BUT, before you can take advantage of this technological breakthrough, you need to give permission for your caregivers to share your eHX Record. Your eHX Record will only show your vital health information like current medications, allergies, current medical problems, recent test results and other related summary information. It does NOT include all the details from medical exams or your doctor visits or admissions to a hospital.
You will have an EMR chart at each of
your doctor’s offices, just as you have a paper chart at each office today.
And like your paper chart, your EMR chart at each of your doctor’s
offices will only be available to that doctor’s office.
Your vital information will be pulled from the EMR chart at each of your doctor’s offices. It will be encrypted for security and then sent to your eHX Record. Again, it will not contain all of the information from your EMR chart, but just the summary data that is critical for your care. Your eHX Record will contain this vital information from each of your physicians’ EMRs.
This summary of your vital medical information will be available to your doctors’ offices and hospital, including the Emergency Department.
Your EHR will:
Ø Give your doctor automatic health reminders. These could include alerts if you need a colonoscopy, pap smear, mammogram, or other routine screening test.
Ø Save time. Once your EHR is active, you and your doctor can spend less time filling out paperwork (like health histories and insurance forms) and more time talking about your treatment and care.
Ø Improve medication recalls. Prescription medications are sometimes recalled for safety reasons (meaning that you need to stop taking them). If this happens with a drug you are taking, your doctor can quickly let you know what to do. This is much harder to communicate with the paper charts that are now used.
Ø Provide back-up in case of disaster. In case of a fire or other disaster, your doctor will likely be able to save your important health information. Recent disasters like hurricanes, (hundreds of thousands of people were left without medical records after Hurricane Katrina), tornados and fires show how important this can be.
If you give permission for a CGHE Record, it will allow your doctors to:
Ø Work better as a team. The CGHE Record can be shared by all the CGHN providers who treat you. This will help them work more as a team because they can all access the same information.
Ø Quickly find information in an emergency. Providers can quickly find information about your medications, allergies, previous health problems, and health care proxies. For some patients, finding this information quickly could save their lives in an emergency.
Ø Avoid drug interactions. Your CGHE Record can help reduce the risk of dangerous drug interactions (when one drug should not be mixed with others).
Who will have access to my information?
EHRs have strict rules about who can access your records and what information they can look at. These rules include:
Ø Your doctors and their clinical staff will be able to see and use your information just as they can with paper records. However, the information will be quickly available to them when you most need it.
Ø Office staff will only be able to access the information they need to do their job. For instance, front desk staff may only be able to view general information such as your name, address, and health insurance information. Your nurse or doctor can access additional information about your illnesses, medications, health history, and test results.
Ø If you have a CGHE Record, only those physicians who are already treating you can access your record without setting off an automatic report. The reports will be monitored by CGHN and used to investigate the reason your record was viewed. Legitimate reasons may include if you needed emergency care or if you are a new patient for a physician.
Ø Anyone who obtains information from an EHR or CGHE Record, who is not authorized to do so, will be punished appropriately. These punishments could range from an official reprimand, suspension of CGHE access, fines or even imprisonment.
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How will my information be protected?
Your health information is protected by many layers of security. These include strict rules about who can access your information and what information they can read or share. There is also computer technology that keeps track of who accesses your record and when. If any of these rules are ever broken, there are harsh penalties for the people involved. Here is more information about these layers of security: Ø Technology. Both your EHR and your CGHE Record are protected by advanced technology that is as good or in many ways better than the technology that banks use to protect financial data. This technology includes: firewalls, intrusion detection, secure communications (SSL), password protection, physical hardware security, automatic alarms for suspicious activity, and task-based access. The CGHE Record is also protected by data encryption, so that even if a non-authorized user were able to break through all of these security walls, the medical information would not be readable. Ø Monitoring. Your EHR and your CGHE Record will also track everyone who has accessed any part of your electronic health records. This includes a list of people who have looked at your medical record, when they looked at it, and what changes (if any) they made. In addition, CGHN will use reports to check for any user violations (if someone without authorization looks at your record). |
Why should you have a CGHE Record?
Your doctor needs your permission to start a CGHE Record for you. If you answer “yes” to any of these questions, a CGHE Record is probably right for you.
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*This Version has been greatly Abbreviated and reduced in size to provide you with the most pertinent Information, For the Full version of this document, Visit the Central Georgia Health Network at: https://cghe.net