BILLINGS — Big Sky Care Connect has already been transforming the way doctors and hospitals share patients' medical information for nearly four years now, but they’re now taking it one step further helping providers.
According to the CEO of Frontier Psychiatry, Dr. Eric Arzubi, the time of waiting weeks for a patient’s medical records is long gone with Big Sky Care Connects health information exchange (HIE).
“Believe it or not we still use faxes for some reason,” Arzubi said. “It (the HIE) almost brings medicine into the 21st century.”
Arzubi said once a patient gives permission, doctors have access to their medical history. Anything from the medications they take to allergies patients have, doctors no longer have to wait weeks to get that information.
“If I see a new patient, I can go in and see other medical records. So, I can see if there are other medical issues that I need to be worried about,” Arzubi said. “The more information we can have, hopefully, the better we can do by our patients in the community and Montana.”
Arzubi is also a member of the board of the team at Big Sky Care Connect, the area's primary provider for information exchange among healthcare professionals, and is excited about the nonprofit's newest launch.
The CEO of Big Sky Care Connect, Ben Tyrrell, said they are now taking the information they have and creating dashboards for providers to use.
“Just starting now to really roll out some dashboards and some different tools that we can give back to providers that can allow them to visualize their patient record information in useful and meaningful ways,” Tyrrell said.
One new feature is grouping patients by risk, so doctors such as Arzubi know who needs the most assistance.
“People who are medium and high risk for being hospitalized, let's not wait until they get hospitalized. Let's reach out to them now and see what we can do to get ahead of that,” Arzubi said.
Big Sky Care Connect is used in over 500 healthcare facilities across the state, including both St. Vincent Regional Hospital and Billings Clinic.
