The Integrated Care Collaboration (ICC) is the Health Information Exchange (HIE) for the Greater Austin/Central Texas area. HIEs organize and store electronic health information of patients across multiple providers and hospitals in one place, allowing doctors, pharmacists, EMTs and other providers to access a more complete record of patients’ medical information in a quick, secure, consistent, and cost-effective manner. HIEs take significant time, money, and collaborative planning to successfully launch and adopt in a community, and ICC has gone through several stages of growth and evolution since it began in 1997.
Our research team began contracting with ICC in 2019 to help innovate ICC’s approach, improve their internal processes, and expand the utility and uses of the ICC platform. The relationship between DMS and ICC is strong and the success of the partnership since 2019 has led to the contract being extended into 2023. Below is a list of some of the accomplishments achieved by DMS in the ICC research and development project:
- Partnered with a nationally-recognized vendor (Collective Medical) to implement emergency and inpatient alerts and notifications (i.e. ADT or “Admission, Discharge, Transfer” alerts)
- Developed and piloted a proactive notification system for Central Health’s most high-risk patients using ICC’s portal, whose success led to Central Health deciding to implement the notifications for all individuals enrolled in MAP (Medical Access Program)
- Connected ICC with UT Austin researchers to generate revenue for ICC ($125k thus far) and a greater knowledge base for how ICC data can be used in healthcare research and delivery
- Moved ICC’s technology ecosystem from leased physical computers to a more advanced AWS (Amazon Web Services) cloud-based environment, resulting in reduced costs ($330k saved annually) and improved ability to scale ICC’s resource capacity as needed
- Improved ICC’s general operations and business practices, including adoption of regular management meetings, use of project management tools, creation of data request and release protocols, and outsourcing activities where appropriate ($300k saved annually).
