Health and Caring for All

INITIATIVE:
Comprehensive Clinical Data-Sharing Network
When people lack adequate health insurance, they usually don't have primary care physicians. As a consequence, many underinsured or uninsured patients resort to emergency room visits for non-emergency medical treatments often resulting in duplicate medical tests, which in turn drives up the cost of health care for the entire community. The lack of a system that would give health care providers shared access to these patients' medical records has been a major obstacle to lowering health care costs and improving the efficiency of care delivery for this population.

To address this challenge, CVC launched the Comprehensive Clinical Data-Sharing Network (CCDSN) initiative to create a network that will share appropriate patient information between the three main hospital systems in Greater Cleveland -- Cleveland Clinic, MetroHealth and University Hospitals -- as well as free clinics and federally qualified health centers.

PROGRESS TO DATE:
With OneCommunity chosen as the lead agency, this initiative began a three-year implementation phase in late summer of 2008.

During 2008, the initial stakeholder group was also expanded to include the Free Clinic of Greater Cleveland, North Coast Health Ministry, Care Alliance, Neighborhood Family Practice and Northeast Ohio Neighborhood Health Services. The first priority of the CCDSN project is to obtain funding for electronic medical records for stakeholders without that capability. Subsequently, electronic linkages to all stakeholders will be developed to complete the first phase of the project.