A lot of splashy new client announcements were made at the HIMSS 2007 Annual Conference & Exhibition in February. One of the more interesting ones involves a collaboration between two competitive laboratories in Nebraska. They deployed a Web-based system to integrate their two businesses. But this system also has the potential to provide the needed business case for providers to participate in a regional health information organization (RHIO).


Lincoln-based Pathology Medical Services (PMS) and Nebraska LabLinc (NLL), which provide anatomic pathology and clinical services, respectively, to patients and a combined 300 healthcare providers in the region, understood the business case for collaboration. Both labs had a huge service overlap of providers.


“We were losing an opportunity because clients wanted a clinical lab and we were only offering one side of what clients wanted,” said Mose Tsoka, IT manager for PMS. The anatomic pathology lab joined forces with Bryan Lincoln General Hospital and opened up a clinical lab – NLL.


The idea of marketing different services to the same clients was challenging because the labs used two different systems for electronic orders. They were faced with creating two different interfaces – one for pathology and one for clinical. But this solution required having to pay a vendor for a point-to-point interface for each client, which was very costly, said Tsoka.


The labs decided to look at integration engines to merge the two systems. “It was a lot more advantageous to be collaborative than to be competitive,” he said.


They settled on InterSystem Corp.’s Ensemble, which allowed healthcare providers to interact with one system for both labs.


“At some point in the very near future, we will be sending lab data to government agencies,” Tsoka said. The system allows for the transmission of HL7-compliant data. “We have the foundation to do that now. We have the platform in order to comply,” he said.


The labs were also forward thinking in their purchase of the integration engine in terms of participation in any RHIO that should form in the area. “We’ve thought about it for sure,” he said. “We looked at the future of the product. Now that we have the engine, we can integrate with RHIOs.”


Trevor Matz, managing director of application integration for InterSystems, noted that PMS/NLL’s deployment of Ensemble highlights an emerging business case for healthcare providers to participate in a RHIO. He says that the “pull” model of extracting information from disparate systems by providers does not benefit hospitals or physicians. This model benefits payers.


In the “push” model, however, hospitals can push healthcare data to physicians’ offices. With an integration engine such as Ensemble, physicians who can’t afford an EMR or don’t use the hospital system can still receive medical results via Web portal.


“This is a mini version of a health information exchange,” said Matz.


With hospitals pushing needed clinical data to physicians in a cost-effective, integrated manner, the real business benefit, says Matz, are in the referrals hospitals would get from the loyal customer base of physicians they are building.


“This is a results-delivery model in which providers are the benefactors,” he said. “It makes good business sense and hospitals are prepared to fund it. When we look at the evolving RHIO market, we see the results-delivery architecture as the first startup to implementing a RHIO.”