NextGen Healthcare, Clinical Decision Support Consortium and WVP Health Authority Join to Launch Clinical Decision Support Pilot

HORSHAM, Pa.-- NextGen Healthcare Information Systems, LLC., a wholly owned subsidiary of Quality Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: QSII) and a leading provider of healthcare information systems and connectivity solutions, and Clinical Decision Support Consortium (CDSC) announced today the successful deployment of a clinical decision support tool aimed at making evidence-based clinical knowledge more readily available to healthcare providers. NextGen Healthcare client Willamette Valley Providers (WVP) Health Authority is one of the first clinical sites with a commercial electronic health record (EHR) to take the program live.

In 2008, Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), part of Partners HealthCare System, founded the CDSC, which competed for and received a research contract from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). CDSC members– leading healthcare provider organizations and EHR vendors, including NextGen Healthcare – worked together to develop, implement and evaluate approaches for incorporating clinical decision support (CDS) into the delivery of healthcare. The CDS Consortium aims to advance that mission by establishing nationwide consistencies for clinical decision support recommendations. This aids in ensuring providers are not entirely reliant upon disparate vendors and product upgrades to receive the most up-to-date evidence-based recommendations.

To achieve this level of consistency, Partners HealthCare created a technical environment that demonstrates successful clinical decision support across different platforms and electronic health records (EHR) systems. Currently, the process involves:

• a provider sending a request for clinical decision support via NextGen^® Ambulatory EHR;
• the NextGen^® system creating an industry-standard Continuity of Care Document (CCD) with a patient’s deidentified clinical data;
• the CCD is delivered to the Partners’ Enterprise Clinical Rules Service (ECRS), where it is analyzed;
• Partners returns an Extensible Markup Language (XML) message with recommendation(s) appropriate for the given patient; and,
• recommendation(s) are immediately displayed to the provider in NextGen Ambulatory EHR without breaking existing workflow.

The solution will continue to be tested by Salem, Oregon-based WVP Health Authority, an association of approximately 530 members practicing primary and specialty care. Data from an ongoing pilot will be collected for six months and analyzed to evaluate the effectiveness of patient information transfer to Partners and care recommendations back to WVP’s physicians.

“The Clinical Decision Support Consortium achieved a critical objective: delivery of evidence-based, consensus driven clinical decision support to multiple disparate EMRs at scale”, explained Dr. Blackford Middleton, the founding principal investigator of the CDSC. “This achievement represents not only the ability to harmonize knowledge representation and key parameters of clinical decision support rules, but also the ability to deliver those rules as web services to a variety of EMRs, and in different places in the EMR workflow. These demonstration projects and their success point the way forward toward creation of an ecosystem of clinical decision support providers offering the end-user an array of choices for clinical decision support, and alleviating the need for local knowledge engineering and management to achieve decision-support at scale. This is a critical step toward achieving the value potential of EMR implementation in this country, and around the world.”

“Historically, research and development of CDS systems has largely taken place at academic medical centers rather than at community-based practices. As a HCIT leader, participating in a project such as this, allows us to help shape best practices for integrating CDS directly into ambulatory EHRs,” said Dr. Greg Fraser, chief medical information officer for WVP Health Authority. “With the right partners and the right collaboration, we executed this proof of concept and look forward to connecting the system’s wealth of clinical content to evidence-based guidelines, helping ensure our providers have the most comprehensive information possible at the point of care.”

“The success of this project suggests that using this type of centralized CDS, populated with consensus approved recommendations for evidence-based care, can be deployed across diverse settings, resulting in improved outcomes and lower costs,” said Dr. Sarah T. Corley, chief medical officer for NextGen Healthcare. “This partnership is a truly integrated, collaborative and strategic approach to clinical data-sharing, and our expertise has positioned NextGen as an effective partner in this cutting-edge research.”

About AHRQ

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's (AHRQ) mission is to improve the quality, safety, efficiency, and effectiveness of health care for all Americans. As one of 12 agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services, AHRQ supports research that helps people make more informed decisions and improves the quality of health care services.

About Partners Healthcare

Partners HealthCare is an integrated health system founded by Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. In addition to its two academic medical centers, the Partners system includes community and specialty hospitals, a managed care organization, community health centers, a physician network, home health and long-term care services, and other health-related entities. Partners Healthcare is one of the nation’s leading biomedical research organizations and a principal teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School. Partners HealthCare is a non-profit organization. For more information, please visit http://www.partners.org/.

About WVP Health Authority

WVP Health Authority is an Independent Provider Association (IPA) that offers Medicare and Medicaid services to individuals in the Mid-Willamette Valley. For the past 20 years, WVP Health Authority has utilized its dedicated clinical and administrative staff to provide quality healthcare in a cost efficient manner. Today, the roughly 500 physicians who are represented by WVP Health Authority collaborate to provide care to over 60,000 Medicare and Medicaid members in the region. As the organization moves forward, it anticipates continued improvement through the strong community partnerships, passionate medical professionals, and an innovative approach that has defined WVP as an organization. For more information, please visit www.wvphealthauthority.org.

About NextGen Healthcare

NextGen Healthcare Information Systems, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Quality Systems, Inc., provides integrated clinical, connectivity and financial solutions, including revenue cycle management services for ambulatory, inpatient and dental provider organizations. For more information, please visit www.nextgen.com and www.qsii.com. Follow NextGen Healthcare on Twitter at www.twitter.com/nextgen, Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/NextGenHealthcare or LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/company/nextgen-healthcare-information-systems.

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