Data sharing for surveillance and continuity of care from birth to diagnosis to public health: How one enterprise-wide electronic medical record supports early hearing detection and intervention efforts

Kaiser California has recently completed the implementation of a comprehensive, computerized documentation process for newborns who receive hearing screening at birth that also facilitates transfer of public health data to the state. The Kaiser electronic medical record (EMR) platform, Kaiser Permanente Health Connect (KPHC) based on EPIC Systemsİ, offers a variety of functionality tools that have been incorporated into this workflow. The benefit of this approach is that clinical information is readily available to multi-disciplinary clinicians, urgent follow-up is electronically monitored for the organization's clinical management of 64,000 newborns annually, and public health data is directly transmitted to the CA Department of Public Health. Since the 1999 implementation of universal newborn hearing screening, software applications have been attempted with variable success for tracking this challenging public health program: data tracking tools by the individual provider, within screening equipment, and at the state, national, or regional levels. Because of KPHC, Kaiser California was able to digitize the American Academy of Pediatrics' Newborn Hearing Screening Guidelines for our enterprise-based solution. The KPHC approach supports the various stages of clinical management for hearing surveillance because everything is contained in the client's single electronic health record. Beginning in 2012, KPHC began provider-to-state digital transfer of public health newborn hearing data, using HL7, into the CA NHSP Data Management System (DMS) thus completing the clinician-public health connection. More importantly, for individual infants identified with hearing loss and their families, the newborn hearing screening tools in KPHC enable our clinicians to guide those families through a potentially complex process from first screening at birth, to their first home visit from an Early Start language instructor. The ultimate benefit of leveraging the power of KPHC is that we also help babies communicate with their world.