SA’s first industrywide health information exchange CareConnect has signed up 5.2-million patients since it went live in April 2022, it said on Wednesday.
The nonprofit CareConnect was founded by SA’s biggest medical scheme administrators and private hospitals to integrate proprietary electronic patient record systems and aims to improve care by providing clinicians with better information about their patients.
It was founded by medical scheme administrators Discovery Health, Medscheme and Momentum Health, and private hospital groups Netcare, Mediclinic and Life Healthcare, and provides clinicians with an electronic patient record that unifies the data held by the participating healthcare facilities and funders.
Arming clinicians and service providers with better information has the potential to improve diagnosis and treatment, reduce unintended duplication of tests, and ultimately lead to savings that benefits patients and medical schemes, says CareConnect CEO Rolan Christian.
Discovery Health CEO Ryan Noach says unified patient records across the health system will ensure more accurate records of their care. “Formalising a (health information exchange) also creates a single integration standard across the industry, and would avoid potentially expensive interoperability costs which are problematic in other healthcare markets, including the US. We hold a strong belief that a patient’s clinical record should be ‘owned’ by the patient, who should be able to determine the access and use of this record, based on their specific consent,” he said.
CareConnect operates only in the private hospital sector now, but discussions are under way with Radiological Society of SA to link radiology practices. CareConnect expects to add pathologists and other healthcare providers later, says Christian.
Talks are continuing with the national health department to gauge the scope for linking CareConnect's health information exchange to its electronic patient records, such as the electronic vaccination data system and its health patient registration system, says Christian.
Secure health information exchanges are already operating in many other countries, such as the US and UK, where implementation is driven by their governments. In SA the impetus came from the private sector, says Momentum health strategist Boshoff Steenekamp.
CareConnect worked closely with the Competition Commission to ensure its operation in terms of the Competition Act, which prohibits collusion, he says. Establishment of a health information exchange was supported by the Competition Commission’s health market inquiry (HMI), which said in its final report that its proposed outcomes monitoring and reporting organisation (OMRO) would require a robust IT system that would enable information gathering and sharing.
It found a lack of information about the outcomes of healthcare interventions affected the quality of care provided to patients, and recommended the creation of OMRO to tackle the problem. OMRO would be a platform for healthcare providers, patients and other stakeholders to gather information about the outcomes of healthcare interventions, ranging from prescribed medicines to operations.
Christian concedes patients may be anxious about who might access their medical records, and said that CareConnect is fully compliant with the Protection of Personal Information Act (Popi).
“Our communication to patients has been that this information closes the loop — your yellow file follows you,” he said, alluding to the yellow manila folders used by many healthcare providers to store patient paper records. Sensitive health information is accessible to healthcare providers only when it is medically necessary, and only with the patient’s consent, says CareConnect.
kahnt@businesslive.co.za
