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HOME > ABOUT > PRESS > MEDICAL RECORD MODEL GAINS NOTICE
Article published - February 25, 2008
Credit: NORTH BAY BUSINESS JOURNAL
MEDICAL RECORD MODEL GAINS NOTICE
MIVIA ALLOWS PATIENT TO ACCESS OWN RECORDS; 6,000 ENROLLED LOCALLY
BY D. ASHLEY VERRILL
SANTA ROSA – Several years ago, St. Joseph Health System community health clinics Executive Director Kathy Ficco piloted an online health record system she hoped would help immigrant farm workers retain important medical information from one move to next. But since enrolling her first patients in MiVia in 2003, the program has drawn more than 6,000 participants and inspired models stretching all the way to New York.
Last month she presented to the federal advisory board for health technology, the American Health Information Community, in Washington D.C. The group, chartered in 2005, is charged with making recommendations to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on how to accelerate the development and adoption of health information technology, as well as advance efforts to achieve President Bush’s goal for national access to secure electronic health records by 2014.
The meeting was attended by representatives from the American Heart Association, National Patient Advocate Foundation, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Department of Defense, Office of Minority Health and other national organizations. Currently, almost every health facility in Sonoma County and across the North Bay is in the process of implementing or have implemented electronic records, but all have the same problem that is solved by MiVia. Hospitals and clinics have a variety of choices for electronic record vendors, but usually they do not have the capability to be transferred from brand to another. In these cases, a patient’s primary care physician and hospital have two different records, with the exclusion of Kaiser Permanente members, and each could be missing information because the two facilities do not communicate.
According to the Institute of Medicine, more than 500,000 people are injured each year because of adverse drug events and approximately 100,000 hospital patients die because of medical mistakes. It is also estimated that about one in every seven primary care visits is affected by missing medical information. Because farm workers often move from one area to the next, Ms. Ficco wanted to create a way for their medical record to travel with them. “When we piloted the program with migrant workers, we discovered that the program can be useful for just about anyone,” she said. “Imagine you go on vacation and have to go to the emergency room. With MiVia, the clinician can immediately access your medical history, allergies, vaccines, which otherwise might take extra time to find or not found at all.” When enrolled, patients have an emergency medical card with personal information, allergies, prescriptions and family contacts. The record is accessible through two web portals at Mivia.org, one for the patient and one for the clinician.
Doctors can upload information including chronic disease treatment schedules, surgeries, illness history, medical charts and reactions to certain treatments. The portals are password protected with encryption and are HIPAA compliant. Patients cannot alter what is entered by a doctor and doctors can not delete something that has already been entered. “It’s been really important for a lot of our clients in preserving continuity of care,” Ms. Ficco said. The Sonoma County program was also developed in a way that makes it easily replicated at other clinics for a start-up cost of about $1,950 and $100 annually. Patients only pay $1 per year. Several larger firms including CapMed and Vital Vault offer similar services, but nothing as widespread on a local basis.
The cost for their services is also between $30 and $50. MiVia is accessible in Spanish and includes other online health resources. In a recent survey of about 600 MiVia clients, the clinic found that more than 40 percent use the record on a regular basis.
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