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Bill Russell: All right, today in Health IT, Meditech launches their own health information exchange that is built on their Canadian solution.

Looking forward to taking a look at this, seeing if what they are trying to do mirrors what Epic has done. They've already done it in Canada. Let's see what they can do in the U. S. We'll see. Today I'm joined with Sarah Richardson and we're going to talk in just a minute.

My name is Bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system, creator of This Week Health, set of channels and events dedicated to transform health care. One connection at a time. Today's show is brought to you by Panda Health. Digital health is hard and Panda makes it easier. Quickly and comprehensively vet digital health solutions and be fully prepared and informed for your next meeting.

Panda helps health system leaders make confident decisions about digital health without the complexity and burden of figuring it out on their own. They help you to get smarter faster through peer input, market intelligence, and advisory services. Check them out at thisweekhealth. com. All right. Hey, this news story, all the news stories we cover, you can find on our website, ThisWeekHealth.

com slash news. Check it out today. And then finally, share this podcast with a friend or colleague. Use it as a foundation for daily or weekly discussions on the topics that are relevant to you in the industry, a form of mentoring. They can subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Sarah Richardson, welcome to the show.

Sarah Richardson: Thank you, Bill.

Bill Russell: Man, you have to sit there that whole time while I'm reading that stuff. And I appreciate that. We have an interesting story today. You and I were talking earlier. We don't talk about Meditech enough. Meditech has a significant market share. in the U. S.

Sarah Richardson: They absolutely do. Let's be honest, I'm an HCA alumni, and it works.

And as they move towards Expanse and other capabilities within their organization, especially, now you've got the big players like HCA, mid market hospital systems or critical access, it's a fantastic solution that works, it's affordable, and it doesn't really get enough funding. airtime out there in the industry.

Bill Russell: Yeah, I was a Meditech shop at St. Joe's and we ran a seven and a half billion dollar health system on Meditech and people scratched their heads like, how could you do that? I'm like, Very efficiently and very effectively, quite frankly. Now, it doesn't have all the bells and whistles, doesn't have nearly, potentially the community that Epic has formed around it because of just their scale at this point.

But invariably when I'm talking to an Epic shop, I'll say, what's your cost of actually running Epic? And they'll say, blah, blah, blah. And I'll say, that's three times, just in people alone, three times, the amount is what it took me to run Meditech. And we saw that in all the metrics that we get these metrics on our systems cost of running the EHR versus other systems or our total cost of spend across IT versus others, and ours would always be in the lower percentile, people are like, how do you do that?

I'm like. We're on Meditech. They're like, oh, and that was a majority of the costs. It's crazy. Anyway, hey, we have a story here. They launched Traverse Exchange, a nationwide interoperability network aimed at enhancing secure health information exchange across compliant EHRs and networks built on the Canadian solution.

We just don't see it. They fly under the radar.

Sarah Richardson: It's a little bit of both. I think there's always going to be the keeping up with your competition, but not specifically to keep up with them as much as it is doing the right thing and then launching it in a thoughtful manner. We'll have to see how well Traverse Exchange actually works.

Is it, compiling the data that creates a comprehensive view that really is effective to both the patient and the provider? That's the intent, clearly. You have to do the right thing. Being able to do the right thing at the right time is as much about strategy as it is about competition.

Bill Russell: You know what I like about this?

Even if you're an Epic shop listening to this going, I wasn't sure I was going to listen to this thing about Meditech Exchange. This just made life easier for Epic shops. It simplifies the number of connections, the number of data points, and whatnot. realize that's the whole idea of Tefka and the QHINs.

But them essentially 20 some odd percent market share are taking that whole group and making it easier to share information with them.

Sarah Richardson: And for Oracle and for Athena and for ECW let's be honest, how many EHRs are still out there? How many independent physician groups still exist on all kinds of different platforms?

We tend to focus on one, two or three of the players, and yet there's So many out there that still require that ability to meet the patient's needs and get that information into the hands of the provider. So this is one more step that allows that to be as seamless as possible. And it's still pretty clunky out there.

I've got two different physician groups that provide my care, and they're both on Epic. And guess what? They actually don't look at my information across the two, Groups, and even though they both have the same system, so we haven't solved it. It's just one step closer to that being a greater reality.

Bill Russell: With these QHINs, and this is a little off the topic here, but with these QHINs and the way this thing's going are we going to be able to, in our patient portal of choice, be able to see our comprehensive medical record? Is that even something we should be expecting?

Sarah Richardson: We should be expecting it, and we should be advocates for it, just like having a national patient identifier.

You should have one number that connects you to all of your information, and you can share it as appropriate.

Bill Russell: Expect it next month, next year, five years, ten years. When can we expect my complete longitudinal medical record being in whatever the patient portal is that I'm using?

Sarah Richardson: I'm in Vegas today, so I'll expect you.

Bill Russell: We're laying off stuff. Over

Sarah Richardson: under odds, the over under 120. I'm going to say, honestly, Bill, within the next five years, we will have that availability, if not sooner, to us. And just a thoughtful app on our phone that allows it to also aggregate all of our data resources from how well we are taking care of ourselves.

So your health apps integrate with your EMR data to create a picture, probably tied to insurance and different premiums, etc. It sounds creepy and yet it's everywhere anyway. So when you can bring them together in a way that's useful, that has tremendous impact and power as value based care and different perspectives of integration and access and equity become more and more of the front loaded conversations.

Those are all. Capabilities that are brought forward by exactly what we're talking about.

Bill Russell: All right, I will take the over on that bet, only because I'm cynical. because I came into healthcare thinking, oh, we can solve this problem. And I believe we can solve this problem.

There's not enough money behind it. There's not enough economic benefit. It benefits the patient. But sometimes that isn't enough to push it over the finish line, and then we need the government to come in and push, which they are, and we need some new financial incentives to push us over that line.

So I'm going to take the over, you take the under. And we will do a show in five years and we will see how it's going. All right, that's all for today. Don't forget, share this podcast with a friend or colleague, keep the conversation going, use it as a foundation for mentoring. We want to thank Panda Health for investing in our mission to develop the next generation of health leaders.

Check them out at this week, health.com/panda. Thanks for listening. That's all for now.