McKesson RelayHealth VA Blue Button Submission

  RelayHealth is pleased to submit our entry for the Blue Button for All Americans competition. We look forward to working with the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to further encourage the widespread use of Blue Button℠ personal health records (PHRs) outside of federal healthcare programs to benefit veterans who receive care from non-VA providers.  Should RelayHealth be selected as the winner of the Veterans Administration competition, our intention is to donate the $50,000 prize to the Wounded Warrior Project to support programs and services to meet the needs of injured service members and their families.       Over the past 12 years, RelayHealth has emerged as the leader in secure online communications and connectivity for healthcare.  Today, more than 200,000 physicians and their staffs, and more than 2,000 hospital and healthcare systems utilize RelayHealth connectivity. There are more than 17 million connected patients and patient health records integrated into the RelayHealth network,  which includes a suite of applications and services that link patients and their records with providers, hospitals, pharmacies, payers, call centers and other healthcare organizations.  Organizations that rely on RelayHealth many care delivery settings, including large integrated delivery systems, academic medical centers, community hospitals, medical groups, health clinics, Independent Practice Associations (IPAs), and Military Treatment Facilities (MTF) across all of Navy Medicine including selected pilot projects within Air Force and Army Medical Service.       RelayHealth, as a wholly owned operating business unit within McKesson Corporation, is well positioned to be a strategic partner. Our existing network of providers and hospitals across the country can offer immediate scale to facilitate the widespread adoption and use of Blue Button PHRs.       McKesson has led the industry in the delivery of medicines and healthcare products for 178 years. As the largest health information technology (IT) company in the world, we are actively engaged in the transformation of healthcare from a system burdened by paper to one empowered by interoperable electronic solutions that improve patient safety, reduce the cost and variability of care and advance healthcare efficiency. McKesson has decades of experience in serving the health IT needs of the largest and most diverse provider customer base in the industry, including 50 percent of all health systems and 77 percent of those with more than 200 beds, 20 percent of all physician practices and 25 percent of home care agencies, which support more than 50,000 home care visits annually.   ·        We process billions of financial healthcare transactions annually among physicians, hospitals, pharmacies, insurers and financial institutions, and provide care and claims management solutions to most of America’s health insurance companies. We provide decision support software through our InterQual® products to help physicians determine the best possible clinical diagnosis and treatment plans. The Department of Veterans Affairs uses this through our software CERME (Care Enhance Review Manager) integrated completely into their NUMI system. For TRICARE Europe, McKesson staffed and supported the Health Care Information Line (HCIL) Nurse Advice Line for more than 7 and a half years under a subcontract with SAIC. We develop and install electronic systems that eliminate the need for paper prescriptions and paper medical records, and provide physicians with easy and secure online access to patient information in care settings across the country. We process over $8 billion in claims annually for TRICARE network providers rendering care for TRICARE beneficiaries.   RelayHealth provides a suite of applications to aggregate and view personal health data from other sources such as commercial health system, reference labs, pharmacy benefit managers for medication history; and additional connectivity at select pilots within the Department of Defense to offer patients’ military medical history.   In addition, RelayHealth offers Internet-based applications and services for patients and licensed healthcare professionals to securely connect and communicate with one another around this personal health data.    RelayHealth applications are fully HIPAA compliant. The environment at RelayHealth currently encompasses the highest level of security, as well as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) security tenets and those of the proposed regulations. The overall priorities of RelayHealth as an organization are to ensure security and be fully compliant with all HIPAA regulations, proposed and finalized. Access, integrity, availability, ownership, authorization, dependability, authentication, and confidentiality are all major considerations within the RelayHealth Security Policy.  In addition, all communication between a stakeholder and the data server is secured using SSL version 3.0, which uses 128-bit encryption. RelayHealth has established rigorous internal privacy and security policies that are maintained and enforced through a team of privacy and security personnel assigned to manage compliance and reporting mechanisms designed to address and monitor privacy issues. RelayHealth meets all current CMS Internet Security requirements, and employs a dedicated HIPAA officer to monitor changes in and enforcement of the pending HIPAA regulations. RelayHealth is committed to full compliance with HIPAA Security Rule for access control (45 CFR §164.312(a)), data integrity (45 CFR §164.312(c)(1)), and transmission security (45 CFR §164.312(e)(1)), and other healthcare regulations.       Historically, RelayHealth has been a pioneer in secure online healthcare communications. We originated the online webVisit®, a clinically structured, online messaging template for secure messaging between patients and physicians. We led the development of a new Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) billing code issued by the American Medical Association (AMA) that allows physicians to garner reimbursement from participating health plans for online webVisit® consultations. The RelayHealth webVisit® remains the leading secure online consultation in the healthcare industry – clinically structured, reimbursable by many commercial health plans, and available for over 150 different symptom templates. The webVisit®, however, is one element in a long list of capabilities which, when combined, offer a comprehensive solution that can improve patient access, support improved coordination and continuity of care, and increase patient, physician and staff satisfaction.       RelayHealth continues to innovate in this regard, leveraging new technologies for mobile apps and data exchange; and playing an important role in supporting connectivity across the entire healthcare continuum. It is this innovation that allows RelayHealth to incorporate Blue Button PHR functionality and make it available for patients already connected to more than the required 25,000 providers. (Attached detail spreadsheet contains physician providers. additional 50 LCP is available for review)       NARRATIVE       RelayHealth pioneered online communications and connectivity between physicians and patients, and offers the most advanced and secure practice con­nectivity solutions available. Utilizing this existing framework and infrastructure, we were able to incorporate the design and use of the Blue Button functionality into our already rich patient portal, which offers applications that can include:   ·        Comprehensive Patient to Physician Secure Messaging Platform ·        Personal Health Record Creation and Management ·        Electronic Prescribing ·        Clinical Document and Results Distribution ·        Patient Pre-Registration ·        Online Bill Presentment, Account Management and Payment Functionality       The incorporation of the VA Blue Button into RelayHealth applications allows provider organizations to offer patients access, and the ability to download, clinical information from a PHR in several formats, including standards-based health information exchange frameworks (standards-based XML files constrained by the HITSP C32 standard) as well as PDF and ASCII Text output. The Blue Button functionality is incorporated into the data export functions from the RelayHealth patient portal, allowing patients to electronically obtain PHR data in PDF, ASCII Text and standards-based XML files constrained by the HITSP C32 standard.  Patients can access the Blue Button in three easy steps:       Step 1 - (Figure 1) Patient Portal Home Page       Step 2 – (Figure 2) Patient Health Record           Step 3 - (Figure 3) Blue Button Export (PDF, ASCII Text, XML)           In accordance with the rules of the competition, RelayHealth applied for and received Blue Button License #11A33213, effective from 08/10/2011. This licensing applies to the use of the following trademarks within the RelayHealth application: USPTO serial #85207607, filed on December 29, 2010; USPTO serial # 85207644, filed on December 29, 2010; USPTO serial #85208187, filed on December 30, 2010; and USTPO serial #85208230, filed on December 30, 2010.      

Selecting the Blue Button sends the user to import/export feature.  

  From the Provider or LCPs view, access to the patient’s information through Blue Button functionality provides the ability to download the patient’s health data, including information entered directly into the PHR by the patient, to be used as input to the patient’s overall care.           Our Software as a Service (SaaS)-based technology is a low-cost, low-maintenance technology platform that enables us to rapidly develop and deploy new applications. This technology also allows us to provide deep levels of integration with other technology platforms leveraging standardized transactions, and we sit at the center of many Health Information Exchanges across the country. As a result, current investments in technology can be leveraged versus uninstalled. In addition, by utilizing an Internet-based application, physicians (and their staff) who have no EMR technology in place can use tools that they will find simple to interact with via the Internet. With the exchange of information, we have also been able to address critical issues like network identity management and terminology mapping, which are embedded in all exchanges of health information.   While RelayHealth is available through the Web, it does not rely on multiple servers distributed across the Internet; RelayHealth uses a single, centrally managed database for all communications. Embedded Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology—a protocol that delivers server authentication, data encryption, and message integrity—ensures that RelayHealth messages can only be accessed by the Licensed Care Provider (LCP), the LPC’s authorized staff, and the patient. Information transmitted via RelayHealth can be trusted to arrive privately and unaltered to the intended recipient, since RelayHealth requires a Sign In Name and Password and can only be accessed by registered users. Patients using the service can view an audit trail detailing who has accessed their Health Record medical profile, and can terminate their online relationship with an LCP at any time—preventing access to future medical information, while preserving access to a historical snapshot of medical information at the time the relationship was terminated.   By offering connectivity and integrated solutions to participants across the spectrum of healthcare delivery, RelayHealth delivers “Health Connections Brought to Life.”   This contest entry is submitted on behalf of RelayHealth by Vita Terry, Federal Contracts Program Manager, 1145 Sanctuary Parkway, Alpharetta, GA, 30009. Additional contact information includes telephone, 770-237-7213; and email, vita.terry@relayhealth.com.  . Blue Buttonsubmission version 5 091211.docx;  DetailProvider Information for VA Blue Button Competition.xlsx