Objective Medical Systems (OMS) is all about cardiovascular information systems. Specifically, the organization caters to busy cardiology practices by providing structured reporting across their diagnostic modalities. OMS also offers a Meaningful Use Stage 2-certified electronic health record (EHR) system that was built from the ground up just for cardiology specialists. By maintaining a narrow focus on cardiology, OMS can offer powerful, tailored, user-intuitive solutions.
The Challenge
In order for OMS to obtain Meaningful Use 2 certification for its EHR system, the system had to be able to generate and transmit prescriptions electronically. So OMS partnered with Surescripts to provide formulary information, therapeutic alternatives and payer alternatives at the time of prescription within its EHR system.
Surescripts connects pharmacies, payers, pharmacy benefit management companies, physicians, hospitals, healthcare information exchanges and EHRs to more easily and securely share health information. OMS initially hosted the infrastructure powering the Surescripts e-prescription solution in-house but soon began having concerns.
“When cardiologists are prescribing medicines that can potentially save lives, any errors or delays are entirely unacceptable,” says Anand Aravind, vice president of operations for OMS. “We realized we needed to build in redundancies to safeguard against natural disasters, loss of power, system failures and other adverse events that could bring down our e-prescribing solution.”
Upon estimating the expense and skills required to update and maintain the in-house infrastructure, OMS decided it would be wiser to outsource the Surescripts solution to an infrastructure-as-a-service provider. By turning to a cloud provider, OMS could focus on its core competency – software for cardiology specialists. The company also could avoid the expense of maintaining the technology in-house and dramatically reduce the risks of outages.
The Solution
After extensive review of providers, OMS chose ClearDATA and its HIPAA-compliant infrastructure, including secure cloud backup and disaster recovery platform. ClearDATA offered low total cost of ownership when compared with expanding an in-house infrastructure, and provided the advantage of deep healthcare knowledge and skills. None of the other service providers OMS was considering delivered HIPAA-compliant data centers, nor did they offer healthcare domain expertise such as in-depth knowledge of how to keep protected health information private and secure.
“In the medical space, data is sacrosanct,” says Colby LeMaire, chief executive officer for OMS. “ClearDATA brought specialized capabilities such as HIPAA compliance and industry-leading knowledge of healthcare security and privacy best practices.”
The Result
Since moving its Surescripts e-prescription solution to ClearDATA’s cloud computing infrastructure, OMS has experienced zero downtime, exceptional performance, and rock-solid security. The ClearDATA environment is highly available and performs swiftly for OMS clients, Aravind says.
“When physicians prescribe medicines electronically, we can rest assured that ClearDATA’s cloud computing infrastructure will route the messages to the correct parties without fail,” he says. “ClearDATA offers built-in redundancy that gives us peace of mind, without the expense and resources required to host and maintain our own e-prescription routing solution infrastructure in-house.”
In addition to delivering a technology foundation with 100 percent uptime, ClearDATA offers other valuable benefits. It stands by stringent service-level agreements, alleviating IT burdens and worries. As a cloud provider, ClearDATA provides a flexible foundation that allows OMS to grow its business without large capital expenditures required to support e-prescriptions.
Through its extensive security and IT knowledge, ClearDATA shoulders the responsibility of providing technology and policies required to safeguard electronic protected health information, a crucial factor for OMS. ClearDATA’s Business Associate Agreement outlines a true partnership in which both companies share the responsibility for compliance.
“With ClearDATA, we have a partner that genuinely understands how vital it is to secure patient information flawlessly, meet healthcare regulations, and guard against downtime,” LeMaire says. “Ultimately, ClearDATA helps our clients improve patient care – and, after all, that’s what this is all about.”
