Hospital Technology Upgrades Aimed At Helping Uninsured, Underinsured

Several organizations in Sarasota are working on technology upgrades to help cut patient wait times at Sarasota Memorial Hospital and area health clinics.
  
Sarasota Memorial Health Care System, Sarasota County Health Department and Senior Friendship Centers with support from The Patterson Foundation worked together in 2012 to try to improve the local health care system to help uninsured and underinsured patients with how their information is shared. 

“Our community has been fortunate to have such key providers working together for decades, with a remarkable history of coordination and care,” said Bob Carter, president and CEO of Senior Friendship Centers. “These technology improvements will now take these collaborative efforts to new levels of efficiency and effectiveness.”

Here's what the organizations are working on to do in 2013:

• Install a health information technology platform at Senior Friendship Centers. The technology platform improvements at Senior Friendship Centers will be interoperable with technology at Sarasota Memorial Health Care System and the Sarasota County Health Department and will aid in sharing health information. This is anticipated to start in January.
• Enable Sarasota Memorial Health Care System, the Health Department and Senior Friendship Centers to develop standardized eligibility requirements, which may help reduce wait times for patients. The eligibility process should be simple for patients and connected across the system of care. Common or shared forms will help streamline the eligibility portion of the system of care.  

The goal is to enable people to seek prevenative health care visits at primary care clinics in lieu of emergency and urgent care room visits to decrease the cost of healthcare to the patients and the health care providers, according to officials, but to do that, more oversight is needed by the Sarasota Health Care Access Council to share resources.

During the workshops, the three health care organizations found that the bump in the road was that different standards were used to become eligible for certain healthcare, so they decided to use the same standard.

Here's what officials say the still need to work on:

• Created a model of how patients enter the proposed system of care
• All entities have agreed to use same eligibility requirements to streamline wait times for patients and eliminate rework. 
• Iron out the details of specific information to collect

The Patterson Foundation’s support helped those organization more formally organize in October 2011 providing a project consultant to get the system started.
 
“Our community is evolving and changing every day, and our health care delivery system needs to change with it,” said Gwen MacKenzie, president and CEO of Sarasota Memorial Health Care System. “This collaborative effort with our community partners has been a critical step in strengthening the safety net resources in Sarasota County and protecting the health of our most vulnerable patients."

While the collaboration leaders are encouraged by the incremental progress, the group is quick to say their work is not yet done. They will reconvene in early 2013 to continue working together.
 
“Our ability and willingness to continue this collaboration will help our community avoid unnecessary duplication of services, lower the cost of providing care and help strengthen and expand our existing safety net system of care,” said Charles Henry, director of Sarasota County Health and Human Services.