Brown and Toland to link 1,500 docs

SAN FRANCISCO – Brown & Toland Physicians took a giant step recently toward realizing the IPA's vision of providing clinical integration and connectivity for its 1,500 primary care and specialty physicians in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The IPA, which is physician owned and governed, defined its goal eight years ago – long before the HITECH Act – and was challenged by the fact that it neither employs its physicians nor maintains their systems.

"We've been on this mission to figure out how we – as an independent group of physicians – can share clinical information," says COO Mark Ficker.

Recently the IPA tapped Allscripts Community Record, powered by dbMotion,
The IPA started the process with clinical results reporting (CRR) by creating interfaces with local labs, hospitals and physician offices. CRR is available to virtually all of the IPA's physicians. Today, approximately 700 physicians are involved in some form of an electronic health record (EHR), with a subset of 250 of those physicians operating a full EHR. Brown & Toland anticipates rolling out a full EHR bundled with a practice management system to at least 750 physicians.

What's important to note, says Keith Pugliese, vice president of accountable care and compliance, is that the EHRs are patient centric, meaning physicians outside of the practice can view the patient’s record. Additionally, the IPA made the decision to make available the tools and platform for physicians to use for their full patient base. "We wanted to do what's right for the community doctors, the independent practitioners," he said. "It's key to have a system that’s patient centric. This is part and parcel with integrating and coordinating care."

Health information exchange is achieved via an agnostic platform – dbMotion’s solution is embedded in all AllScripts’ products and can also collect and distribute information from other EHR systems. “We need to move forward with this environment,” Ficker said.