| Rural RHIO |
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Rural RHIO’s require the various clinical provider groups within a geographic region to come together in the name of improved care and shared efficiencies. Rural RHIOs lead to the delivery of more comprehensive care to rural patients and leverage the Internet and PC-based interfaces, to control treatment costs and inherent geographic and infrastructure limitations. Each rural RHIO is supported by multi-layered software solutions that synthesize and integrate disparate data on individual patients from various facilities, making the data readily accessible to healthcare providers at the point of care delivery. Rural RHIOs that are scalable Web-based solutions have the power to improve the overall quality of care in rural America. Rural RHIOs improve communication between hospitals and rural physicians and facilitate the referral process by making patient information readily available to relevant medical users. The sharing of personal health information must extend to include medical care providers in an entire region to make large-scale chronic-disease management and medications management possible. The benefits derived from sharing of personal health information within a regional network are profound. Active Rural RHIOs give healthcare professionals the ability to easily track and manage chronic diseases and alert patients to potentially serious findings. Rural RHIOs also ensure that physicians, regardless of their location, have accurate and up-to-date information on their patients’ medications and the ability to prevent serious adverse drug interactions or other lapses. Nationally, rural RHIOs are poised to shape the future of public health, including the creation of a National Health Information Network, electronic immunization records and the tracking and analysis of local epidemics. Rural RHIOs will one-day change the healthcare industry. All it takes is strong leadership and a collective human desire to improve patient care. Orion Health has been contributing to Rural RHIO solutions for over 10 years. |
