Comprehensive, longitudinal patient records – keys to success

Better EHRs deliver better outcomes. They also protect patients and providers, fuel powerful research and much more. But health systems face many challenges managing data across care settings – one expert offers guidance.

American patients will see an average of 18.7 different doctors during their lives. Each encounter will generate its own data, including diagnoses, vital statistics, lab results, medications and more.

Assembling all of this into a single, comprehensive record, even within the same health system, is challenging, to say the least.

But having that longitudinal medical record is key to providers’ ability to care for patients effectively and efficiently. Add payers to the mix and the potential for incomplete records grows even more.

Pawan Jindal is CEO and founder of Darena Solutions, vendor of a platform for healthcare data management. He knows the challenges of piecing together comprehensive, longitudinal patient records.

We interviewed Jindal to discuss why the need for comprehensive, longitudinal patient records; what the challenges are to assembling them; how hospitals and health systems can piece them together and share them among hospitals, labs, payers and providers; and what kinds of results provider organizations can achieve by having true longitudinal medical records.

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