Utilizing a health information exchange to facilitate COVID-19 VA primary care follow-up for Veterans diagnosed in the community

Rachel L Sherman; Kimberly M Judon; Nicholas S Koufacos; Vivian M Guerrero Aquino; Shaniqua M Raphael; Judith T Hollander; Kenneth S Boockvar

doi:10.1093/jamiaopen/ooab020

Utilizing a health information exchange to facilitate COVID-19 VA primary care follow-up for Veterans diagnosed in the community

JAMIA Open. 2021 Mar 16;4(1):ooab020. doi: 10.1093/jamiaopen/ooab020. eCollection 2021 Jan.

Authors

Rachel L Sherman¹, Kimberly M Judon¹, Nicholas S Koufacos¹, Vivian M Guerrero Aquino¹, Shaniqua M Raphael¹, Judith T Hollander¹, Kenneth S Boockvar¹

Affiliation

¹ Department of Veterans Affairs, James J. Peters Medical Center, Bronx, New York, USA.

Abstract

The use of alerts from the Bronx RHIO, a health information exchange (HIE) to identify James J. Peters VAMC patients diagnosed with COVID-19 in the community was described to facilitate COVID-19 VA primary care follow-up. COVID-19 hospitalization and testing alerts were delivered on a Bronx RHIO facility report. VA COVID-19 follow-up care by telephone and video was guided by local COVID-19 clinical pathways, electronic health record (EHR) templates, and tracking through a database. VA received 180 RHIO alerts for 111 unique patients, and 88 had positive non-VA testing from March to June 2020. 41% of the 88 had non-VA admissions and 23% died. 63% received VA primary care follow-up of COVID-19 symptoms documented by custom EHR templates. The HIE identified 11% of the facility COVID-19 patients. HIE alerts can be used to identify facility COVID-19 patients diagnosed in the community and facilitate follow-up by their VA primary care teams.

Keywords: COVID-19; coronavirus; health information exchange; health information interoperability; veterans health.

Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Medical Informatics Association 2019. This work is written by US Government employees and is in the public domain in the US.