“I think our work with asthma is just the beginning of managing all the practice patients with complex medical problems. As each patient sees a specialist or has contact with another health care provider, regardless of the location or institution, that information could then be sent to the medical home and have the key drivers captured for surveillance, management, pay for performance, and quality improvement efforts. This can be done with minimal staff requirements and a high level of sustainability in an electronic environment.

- Dr. Scott Callahan, pediatrician and medical director with Children’s Health Care in Batesville, IN

Situated in rural Southern Indiana, Children's Health Care in Batesville, Indiana, may not at first glance seem extraordinary. But don’t judge a book by its cover – this small pediatric practice is a revolutionary place.

Children's Health Care is part of a vanguard of practices demonstrating how cutting edge technology and connectivity wedded with clinical changes can help transform health care quality and outcomes. More than 95% of the pediatric asthma patients at Children’s Health Care routinely receive optimal asthma care, extraordinary performance according to national measures.

Children's Health Care is an outpatient site of Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati and provides primary care for a large geographic area in southeast Indiana. The practice employs 4 full time physicians, 2 part time physicians, and 2 nurse practitioners.

Dr. Scott Callahan, medical director for Children’s Health Care, has been a leading proponent and early adopter of technology to improve patient care. The practice implemented an electronic health record (EHR) in 2007. But it was connecting that EHR with HealthBridge that allowed the practice to become highly efficient and effective at managing its patients. Dr. Callahan and his colleagues access almost all of patients’ health information directly in the patient’s electronic chart. Getting so much information external to the practice in an electronic format through HealthBridge helped eliminate costly paper processes.

“Connecting to HealthBridge has made our electronic health record worth the investment. We are able to create efficient workflows and manage patients using connected electronic technologies,” stated Dr. Callahan.

A member of Cincinnati Children’s Pediatric Asthma Collaborative, Dr. Callahan also helped introduce the use of a registry for population health improvement. With a click of a few buttons, Dr. Callahan can easily monitor how many of his patients are receiving optimal asthma care. The registry tracks his percentages on a variety of asthma quality measures for the patients he sees every day. This combination of technologies – EHR, exchange and registry – are foundational elements for the practice’s high performance.

Ever an innovator, Dr. Callahan is ready to go after the next challenge. “We are eagerly awaiting the ability to push information such as immunization records and orders for labs, diagnostics, or referrals thru HealthBridge and allow that information or order to be received by state registries or institutions delivering the care.“

Children’s Health Care is participating in a number of national programs funded by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. The practice is signed with the Tri-State Regional Extension Center and is participating in the Greater Cincinnati Beacon Collaboration. Through its connectivity with HealthBridge, Children’s Health Care will also benefit from Indiana’s State Health Information Exchange Grant which will provide connectivity to help practices to connect to public health entities, other hospitals and practices outside the region, and even patient’s own personal health records.