Georgia Regional Academic Community Health Information Exchange finds growth

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Jan. 27, 2015 — The organization connecting Electronic Health Records (EHRs) for nearly one million patients at 11 different health care facilities in Georgia, is growing. In the past six months, the number of data sources providing information through the GRAChIE network has grown by 450 percent.

Georgia Regional Academic Community Health Information Exchange (GRAChIE) is a Health Information Exchange (HIE) organization founded by health information technology (IT) supplier, Cerner Corp., and two major health systems, GRHealth and Navicent Health. More than 40 percent of participants reside in Central and Eastern Georgia’s largest metro areas. The remaining population is scattered across the most impoverished and rural parts of the state.

In addition to an uptick in data sources, system usage has increased 250 percent in the past six months.

“HIEs are most needed in rural areas around the country,” said Tara Cramer, executive director, GRAChIE System. “Here in Georgia, seventy miles is a very common commute for a patient in one health system. Now, no matter where the patient is, their medical records are at the provider’s fingertips.”

GRAChIE helps caregivers from different hospitals and doctors’ offices share important medical information about their patients. When a patient approves, doctors and nurses at different institutions that participate in GRAChIE can share medical information such as allergies, medications and lab results with other providers. This organization provides additional utility to providers and may contribute to increased time with the patient.

“GRAChIE is an example of how different health care organizations are coming together to benefit the patient and help clinicians provide better care,” said Bob Robke, vice president, Cerner. “It’s advancing care by breaking down technology boundaries to share information, and growing its abilities to do so with each passing month.”                                                                      

GRAChIE is designed to connect a variety of different types of health care organizations, from large health systems to rural critical access hospitals to small physician practices. GRAChIE uses technology from Cerner to enable it to connect different organizations to one another to electronically share information, regardless of the EHR systems they use.

“We want to be an interoperability broker for providers,” Cramer said. “We want to offer health care shops the tools they need to achieve strategies from patient-centered medical homes to ACOs to Meaningful Use. I’m confident in the solid foundation of Cerner’s solution and in the innovations they’re delivering to continue to advance the future of GRAChIE.”