FHIR Integration – Remote Blood Pressure Monitoring for Postpartum Care

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CLIENT OVERVIEW

Our client is a large not-for-profit integrated health care system across an academic medical center, a Medicaid managed care organization, Primary Care Physicians Group and a network of community health centers.

CHALLENGE

This organization saw the increased need due to the Covid-19 pandemic to provide blood pressure monitoring devices to postpartum mothers that would integrate data with their clinical systems. They needed an Epic Certified Ambulatory consultant who had experience with Flowsheets and Questionnaires, and a solid understanding of FHIR, API Integrations, Epic build/configuration work, and testing. They also needed this consultant to help them partner with a health tech company to obtain the physical blood pressure cuffs to distribute to postpartum mothers.

Routine blood pressure monitoring is vital to mitigate the risk of postpartum hypertension and complications for new mothers therefore creating the need for a more telehealth-friendly device. These blood pressure cuffs aim to improve patient care and enable the frequency of readings in order to get the proper medication to a patient before her blood pressure starts to become threatening. Having the ability to integrate these vitals with the health system’s EHR would be critical in delivering this care.

APPROACH

The organization decided to partner with Talent Groups and leverage our Health IT expertise in selecting an Epic Ambulatory Analyst to do FHIR integrations between the device and the EHR. The cuffs were cloud-based and were able to capture readings, encrypt vitals and then send that data to a HIPPA-compliant web portal.

Queen’s consultant partnered with the business to define the workflow and determine how the integration would fit in with existing workflows. They provisioned user access to launch the new features, configured the non-production and production launch, and added the Launch functionality to relevant workflows. The consultant did Vitals Flowsheet configuration and configured Epic to store SMART data elements.

IMPACT

Talent Groups' Epic certified consultant coordinated with the team to create FHIR integrations between the blood pressure cuff and the health system’s EHR, to enable the ability to monitor blood pressure levels during telehealth visits. Our consultant was able to build strong relationships with the business, to leverage their clinical knowledge and technical expertise, and facilitate and drive the project forward. Talent Groups was there every step of the way from the initial recruitment of the ideal resource, to seamless on boarding, to consistently providing ongoing support to the consultant and manager.

Moving forward, the organization is planning to use this previously unavailable data for Research purposes. Having this data in Epic was a big benefit because they can now pull the data directly into vitals. This project was critical to the organization in keeping new mothers safe at home and out of the hospital during the height of Covid-19. The initiative was able to put the control of health back into patients’ hands to improve overall health outcomes.