The Patient-Centered Data Home (PCDH) ensuring clinical data “wraps around” the patient wherever they receive care

QHN is now part of a live HIE-to-HIE data exchange with the Utah Health Information Network (UHIN) and Arizona Health-e Connection (AzHeC) as part of the Patient-Centered Data Home (PCDH) project. The PCDH model is based on the principle that clinical data should follow patients no matter where care has occurred. In this model all clinical data becomes part of the comprehensive longitudinal patient record in the patients’ data home, which is the community health information exchange (HIE) where the patient resides.

External Document Search provides access to data from other HIEs

The project was initiated by the three HIEs because of the close working relationship of the HIEs and because of the significant number of patients who, by necessity or choice, receive care in one of these neighboring states. HIEs share common borders and common patients and providers are now able to exchange information on these patients through an External Document Search in the QHN system. This information exchange has significant potential to create a more comprehensive patient records in each of the participating HIEs. 

By sharing the zip code data of their geographic service areas, the HIEs have been able to set up an automated process so that whenever a patient has a health care event in a neighboring state (such as a hospital or emergency department admission, transfer or discharge), an alert to the patient’s data home HIE is triggered. The HIE that receives the alert is able to send a query to pull this patient information to create a more complete longitudinal health record in the patient’s data home. Providers using the QHN system may note encounter information indicating the source is another HIE such as UTAH or ARIZ.