Kaiser Permanente announced today that all medical facilities included in its eight regions is now equipped with Kaiser 
Permanente HealthConnect, the largest electronic health record in private sector in the world. Kaiser Permanente hospitals in Oakland, Richmond and Vallejo in Northern California were the last facilities to complete the final stage of electronic health record installation. HealthConnect includes documentation, clinical decision support and bar-coding for medication administration.
Kaiser Permanente's HealthConnect supports healthcare members with access to patient information and the best, latest practices all in one place in order to improve patient safety and quality of healthcare service. HealthConnect helps more than 8.6 million people to connect with their physicians, pharmacists, personal and medical information with secure connections. HealthConnect also aims to improve cooperation between both primary and specialty healthcare teams.
"KP HealthConnect helps ensuring that our care teams have the tools they need to deliver high-quality care and the best patient experience possible," says Andrew M. Wiesenthal, MD, SM, associate executive director at The Permanente Federation. "The electronic health record has proven results in helping us improve the management of chronic conditions and encourages the use of preventive medicine. This milestone is one that we have looked forward to for years, and it is extremely rewarding to have watched an idea that was questioned by many, turn into a reality." he added.
KP HealthConnect allows patients to manage their own health. My Health Manager offers secure access to a personal health record that has shared access to the HealthConnect clinical record. HealthConnect was developed to aid members connecting to services and people monitoring their health. Using My Health Manager, Kaiser Permanente members have access to their lab test results, medication information and conclusions of their health conditions. HealthConnect permits members to e-mail their doctors, which would save effort and time for members other than going to a physician's clinic. My Health Manager is used by more than 3 million members who performed more than 27 million logins to the system in 2009.
Kaiser Permanente began installing HealthConnect in 2004 to improve healthcare. Kaiser Permanente developed My Health Manager as a personal health record tool in 2007. Kaiser Permanente completed installations in all outpatient facilities in Kaiser Permanente's eight regions by April 2008.The Health Information Management System Society honored Kaiser Permanente for their hospital-based implementation. HIMSS analytics developed the EMR Adoption Model to assess health IT implementation in 2400 hospitals in the US. By the end of 2009, 39 hospitals were identified for achieving the highest state of implementation. 24 of these hospitals were Kaiser Permanente members. It is expected that the remaining Kaiser Permanente hospitals will be recognized as Stage 7 hospitals in 2010.
The complete installation of KP HealthConnect in inpatient and outpatient centers will allow more information sharing, improving the outcome of healthcare in coming years. Integrated electronic disease registries already made KP HealthConnect data to deliver a view of several chronic conditions aiming to facilitate the delivery of recommended healthcare. Kaiser Permanente is cooperating with several healthcare organizations including the U.S. Department of Veterans' Affairs, to assess means for secure sharing of patient information from KP HealthConnect through the National Health Information Network for patients receiving multiple healthcare services from different systems. Data sharing will make sure that each healthcare team treating the patient has the complete, updated clinical information required to provide quality care.
