Collaboration and coordinated care is vital because virtually all segments of the U.S. healthcare industry including payers, providers and vendors alike benefit from efforts to share critical patient information. The overwhelming majority of patients receive care from more than one caregiver, whether it is a solo physician, physician group, hospital, laboratory, pharmacy, urgent care center, work-site clinic, school clinic, or public health site, however, without some means of integration and data sharing, the patient’s healthcare experience is frustrating and fragmented. Fragmentation results in errors, duplication and lack of coordination.

There are three steps to achieving a connected community:

1. Deploy clinical systems in the community
2. Connect the people using these systems
3. Create a single community patient record across all care settings
   

With Allscripts Community Solutions, hospitals and physician practices can achieve meaningful use of EHR as defined by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), positioning them to be eligible for federal incentive dollars.

The solution connects a healthcare organization to any EHR software or electronic medical record (EMR) system regardless of vendor, and also provides access for providers who do not use an EHR. The solution also provides a single point of integration with Patient Portals.

As hospitals and physicians explore closer partnerships with the relaxation of the Stark regulations, Allscripts supports interoperable systems and seamlessly shares data between provider organizations. It can also help entities such as regional health information organizations (RHIOs), health information exchanges (HIEs), and nationwide health information networks (NHINs) promote shared information across care settings for safer, more continuous patient care.