UCLA Health, among the most comprehensive and advanced healthcare systems in the world, has activated the LANES health information exchange.
This first phase of the LANES HIE go-live entails onboarding 303 UCLA Health network care sites including ambulatory and satellite care facilities and four hospitals: Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica, UCLA Mattel Children’s Hospital, and Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital at UCLA.
UCLA Health will access LANES to enhance the communication between primary care and acute care providers to support patients’ continuity of care. The health network will share episodic ADT data, discharge summaries, radiology reports, image narratives, lab results, prescribed medications and clinical procedures, to better support and inform care transitions to local community clinic providers.
A key factor for patient-centered delivery systems is socially, culturally effective and responsive care that engages patients to best meet their health needs.
UCLA Health clinicians can use the LANES HIE to access records documenting patients’ most recent encounters outside its network to help promote better informed continuity of care.
Research highlights the major opportunity to employ a county-wide HIE to support cost-effective quality care management:
- Many people, particularly those with chronic conditions, receive health services from a variety of providers, with no single provider responsible for coordinating all that care. The Commonwealth Fund-supported study reports this “fragmentation” of ambulatory care can lead to communication gaps and poorer outcomes for the patient. Fragmented care is also associated with higher rates of emergency department visits and hospital admissions, as well as greater costs.
Moreover, patients with one to two chronic conditions and highly fragmented care were 13 percent more likely to visit the ED, and 14 percent more likely to have a hospital admission, the same study disclosed.
- Nationwide about 30 percent of ED visits among patients with common chronic conditions are potentially unnecessary, leading to $8.3 billion in additional costs for the industry, according to a Premier analysis.
“We’re excited to partner and connect with UCLA Health now part of the LANES shared data exchange supporting the community-wide care needs of LA County patients,” said Ali Modaressi, CEO of LANES. “Our HIE platform captures the wide breadth of health data across our fragmented delivery system including ED visits and community medical encounters to unify into one longitudinal record. As more healthcare organizations onboard, we’re excited to see medical professionals increasingly use the data to inform and complete appropriate plans of care for their patients.”
