Burbank, CA (PRWEB) October 25, 2012
Richard Stephenson, CEO and Founder of RISARC, a leading national provider of high-technology and revenue recovery solutions to the U.S. health care industry, today commended the State of Massachusetts and its Governor for the launch of one of the very first and largest active state health information exchanges. The new system will enable the secure and paperless exchange of individual medical records among health care providers, insurers and individual patients.
Golden spike
On Tuesday, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick joined healthcare partners and state officials in Boston to launch the states first use of its new exchange. During the Golden Spike event, Governor Patrick sent his own personal health care record electronically from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston to Baystate Medical Center in Springfield the first of what will soon be many millions of health records generated inside Massachusetts and traveling across the state and the nation to meet the needs of patients and providers.
The Massachusetts system was the first nationwide to receive federal funding. The state received a total of $ 16.9 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and Medicaid for the program.
Paperless revolution
Said RISARC CEO Stephenson: The wonderful convergence of nationally ranked research and general care hospitals in Boston and New England located nearby the headquarters of some of the largest health-care insurers makes this launch of the Massachusetts exchange particularly meaningful. The support of this program from Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick underlines the importance of the paperless revolution that will soon be transforming health care nationwide. An electronic health record exchange has particular relevance to the patient because of its immediate and secure system wide access to health care records measurably reduces duplicative services that drive up costs and, in the end, improve and enhance patient care by eliminating unnecessary and redundant procedures.
The new system replaces the use of central repositories for storing clinical data and permits hospitals to query one another for information. The next phase in the expansion of the states health information exchange system, taking place next year, will focus on analytics and will allow state health officials to instantly spot and monitor patterns that might be related to life-threatening environmental problems or general disease breakouts. By 2015, virtually all patients throughout the state will have direct access themselves to their records regardless of which plan or provider they have.
Saving billions for millions
The secure electronic sharing of medical documents is an immeasurable key to success of the new health information exchanges. It also means the ability for coordinated care for patients. We have already seen across the country that early adoption of an electronic record exchange by Health Information Handlers, certified by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) esMD program, are reducing waste and fraud in the Medicare and Medicaid programs and saving billions of dollars for millions of patients and providers. Because Massachusetts is among the first at the state level to take full advantage of the funding and incentives the federal government provides for going paperless, that state will certainly be among the first to see the savings from what is a profound revolution in health care.
About RISARC
RISARC is a leading national high-technology and revenue recovery consulting firm to the health care industry. RISARC, founded in 1990, has recovered over $ 1 billion for its clients. The company offers the RMSe-bubble for secure electronic document exchange and the signature RISARC 360