The OU School of Community Medicine and IBM have collaborated to build an IT-based, electronic health-record model in hopes of improving Oklahoma’s health care record.

The strategic partnership would, over the next several years, develop a network of physicians, hospitals, pharmacies and labs working together to share information on patients. Physicians will be able to access a larger and fuller picture of a patient’s health care record, said Daniel Duffy, senior associate dean of academic programs at the School of Community Medicine.

He said the current model of electronic medical records is problematic because medical data is isolated in the offices of various health care providers, making it difficult and redundant for patients and doctors to access information at another site. The new electronic model will centralize all the data in electronic medical records into one easily accessible database.

“The idea is to create a system that can take the information collected at each site and make it available in a health information exchange,” Duffy said. “This way, it would be possible for me to have information, say, on my patient from an emergency room they visited last week.”

David Kendrick, director of medical informatics at the School of Community Medicine, said it was surprising that health care information hadn’t before been centralized in a health information exchange system. He said the new project is a step in the right direction.

“It’s as if there was always a vast expanse of desert and until there were highway stripes painted on it, we didn’t know where to drive,” Kendrick said. “Now that we have the stripes and the road signs, the road is much clearer to improving health care in Oklahoma.”

Kendrick said the complexity created by the presence of many health insurance companies, like Blue Cross and Medicare, also will be reduced with a centralized electronic health care system.

“All [health insurance companies] have different rules and it can be very painful to file,” he said. “Having many payers is OK from a market-driven perspective, but it’s a very difficult for systems integration.”

Oklahoma ranks last in the nation in terms of access to health care, quality of care, health equity, avoidable hospital use and cost, and health status, according to the School of Community Medicine’s Web site.

IBM executives and OU physicians are optimistic this project will improve Oklahoma’s health care record and serve as a model for other health systems and primary care practices across the country.

“This initiative puts Oklahoma in a unique position to leap forward in terms of quality of health care,” Duffy said.