Customer Interview: Tampa General Hospital
careMESH recently sat down with Benjamin Fuentes, IT Analyst at Tampa General Hospital, to get his “boots on the ground” perspective of how careMESH was integrated with the hospital’s EHR, the impacts on day-to-day operations, and how these new capabilities have eased the secure delivery of patient information to outside healthcare providers.
1- How does the careMESH National Provider Directory integrate into the Tampa General Hospital and USF Health Epic EHR and deliver messages digitally into the community?
Most importantly, careMESH provides us with a directory that expands to the entire nation, so it allows us to send messages to anybody. All of our messages are sent electronically, and then careMESH provides our customers with electronic delivery. If necessary, they will go ahead and fax it depending on the preference of the provider, and then on the fax cover sheet, careMESH invites them to ‘join the careMESH portal, and this is what you get when you join.’
2- careMESH is working with TGH and USF to help optimize content and exchanges around referrals. How does that work?
careMESH takes what our Epic EHR provides and makes it easier for our trading partners to take the relevant information in and in the format they provide—in the (careMESH) portal, in the recipient’s EHR, or via fax.
3- Why is tracking the delivery of messages (ADTs, referrals, and transitions of care) so important?
I think in this current climate with COVID, it's very important to make sure we are delivering health information as efficiently and quickly as possible to our trading partners—to promote better quality care for our patients.
4- What does careMESH do that your EHR couldn't?
With our EHR, we weren’t sending everything electronically. careMESH provided us with a digital delivery method that allows us to send all of our referrals, summaries of care, and ADT notifications electronically. And even if our trading partners don’t choose to receive content electronically, careMESH will go ahead and then send that information via fax and provide them with the information they need to login and join the careMESH family.
5- What changes have you seen since implementing careMESH?
We’ve seen a very large increase in meeting our PI (Promoting Interoperability) measures, which is amazing. We’re also seeing that the information is being sent from our hospital to our trading partners, both local and out of state, and I think that is helping us improve patient care dramatically.
6- As an IT Analyst, how has implementing careMESH impacted your day-to-day?
careMESH has made my life a whole lot easier, I’ll tell you that much. It’s nice to see that we’re now delivering messages to our customers very quickly, very efficiently. careMESH has done a phenomenal job of working with our close trading partners in surrounding areas to create careMESH accounts, and we’ve heard nothing but great things.
7- What does your team think about the careMESH partnership?
They love it. And when I say ‘they,’ I mean both my personal IT team and our operations team. Especially the referrals team—with some of the improvements we're making with adding insurance and authorization number to communications—they're going to see a decrease in actual workload. They receive approximately 600 faxes a day requesting this information, but with careMESH's help, we're going to be sending those out to the community providers very soon.
8- Would you recommend careMESH to other hospitals using Epic?
Yes, absolutely. I would recommend careMESH to any other hospital if they want to adopt a stronger relationship with community providers, and we're seeing that now, very successfully.