Prime Healthcare Services joins Inland Empire HIE

California's Inland Empire Health Information Exchange is adding Prime Healthcare Services to its network, making patient health information available across all of the hospitals in Prime's fast-growing roster of facilities across the country.

The Inland Empire HIE allows its member hospitals, providers and health plans to access, share and review medical records electronically. Until now, the exchange has been exclusive to California—Riverside, San Bernardino and San Joaquin counties. The inclusion of Prime Healthcare Services will add the for-profit chain's 23 hospitals, including nine outside of California—in Nevada, Texas, Kansas and Pennsylvania.

“Prime Healthcare Services, in our mission to deliver comprehensive, quality Healthcare in a convenient, compassionate and cost effective manner, recognizes the need to engage with local providers and other facilities by our hospital systems across the nation,” Sujeethnath Lingutla, corporate director of information technology and portfolio management office for Prime Healthcare Services, said in a news release. “Given the requirements of meaningful use and the desire on our part to improve the health of our patient population, partnering with IEHIE just made good sense.”

Through the partnership, Prime Healthcare Services will also be able to use the Orion Health HIE, a platform for clinicians that provides a secure and Web-based portal for accessing patient information and using other tools that support improvements in care, adoption of electronic health records, public health reporting, and achievement of meaningful use.

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