Imagine full access to your medical records on a secure Internet site, rather than pleading for copies of paper records from your physician's office.
Under a new patient-centered health care network coming to Tulsa, that scenario is likely, say University of Oklahoma School of Community Medicine physicians.
IBM has selected the school as a partner in developing a groundbreaking patient-centered health care network in Tulsa that could reduce medical errors, lower costs and improve outcomes.
It will connect patients' clinical data between hospitals, physicians' offices, ambulance services, fire departments and patients.
"This is a model of health care delivery that puts us in the position to anticipate health care needs," said Dr. Gerard Clancy, the president of OU-Tulsa.
Sherie D. Giles of IBM's office in Houston said IBM chose Tulsa because of OU's vision and the community's eagerness to create a medical home model.
"With this, you will be able to go on the Web and have access to information about your health. You can allow access to whomever you want. Because, to me, it's my information," she said.
Clancy said Tulsans could see evidence of the system in as soon as five months. "We hope Tulsa will serve as a national model," he said.
IBM's first "medical home" pilot project with a medical school will involve about 355 Tulsa-area physicians and the OU School of Community Medicine.
No funding is needed yet, but Clancy has an eye on
$20 billion set aside by the Obama administration to help communities build health information technology.
Dr. David Kendrick, a faculty member at the OU School of Community Medicine, said, "This effort is timely as it is positioning us as a community to be a potential recipient of these dollars.
"Health care is where banking was 50 years ago, when they carried bags of money from one place to another," he said. "Now we can go to an ATM and get money out of the bank. It's time for health care to catch up."
Physicians now operate as individual islands, Kendrick said. "You have a closer relationship with your veterinarian than you probably do with your primary care physician," he said.
Veterinarians send out cards to remind pet owners when their animals need vaccinations or check-ups. People, however, said Dr. Daniel Duffy, a senior associate dean at the school, have to work extra hard to get the medical care they need when they need it.
A "medical home" is not a place or an office. It is a team working together for all a patient's medical needs, a system of coordinated care that patients reach through their primary care physician, he said.
In this system, physicians are more proactive and work with a multidisciplinary team, he said. At present, doctors are paid only for face-to-face visits, but this model will allow a patient to consult a doctor without a visit when there is no compelling need.
It will allow emergency room physicians to find out what medications a patient is on and what allergies the patient may have.
And in the long run, Kendrick said, it will save the Tulsa community an estimated $200 million a year.
"We are not talking about building one A 1/4bersystem. It's about taking the systems we have and connecting them to one another," he said.
Tulsa health care facts:
--North Tulsans die 14 years earlier than south Tulsans.
--Three ZIP codes in Tulsa have no physicians.
--Tulsa has the highest death rate from cardiovascular disease and nearly the highest infant mortality rate.
--Tulsa is the largest city in the U.S. without a public hospital and has too few federally qualified health care centers.
--Oklahoma ranks 50th in overall health care quality and 51st in care given to children.
--Oklahoma is the only state to have a worsening age-adjusted death rate over the last 25 years.
Kim Archer 581-8315 kim.archer@tulsaworld.com To see more of the Tulsa World, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.tulsaworld.com. Copyright (c) 2009, Tulsa World, Okla. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Copyright (C) 2009, Tulsa World, Okla.