The Golden Spike Part 2

Today we made history in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.   At 11:35am Governor Deval and his physician sent the Governor's healthcare record from Massachusetts General Hospital to Baystate Medical Center. It arrived and was integrated into Baystate's Cerner medical record.

The Massachusetts HIE is now open for business. Immediately following the Governor's record, institutions throughout the Commonwealth sent their own transactions. The record I exchanged had special significance to my family.

When Kathy was diagnosed with breast cancer (a highly suspicious mammogram) at Newton Wellesley (a Partners hospital), she was told that Massachusetts had no healthcare information highway and she would have to drive her records and images to Beth Israel Deaconess where she chose to seek the care of oncologists,surgeons, and radiation oncologists.

Two months after she began treatment, her health plan called and told her "we think you have cancer because you have incurred $25,000 in chemotherapy costs since December";. Her out of network caregivers had no visibility into her cancer care...