Press Releases
University Of Kansas' Jayhawk Primary Care Ramps Up Online Communications with Patients
Jayhawk Physicians Accelerate Use of e-Prescribing to Improve Quality and Convenience of Care with RelayHealth
Kansas City, MO, and Emeryville, CA, June 9, 2006 — University of Kansas' Jayhawk Primary Care expands its current secure online communication initiative to serve an additional 35,000 patients. The service will be made available through RelayHealth Corporation.
Jayhawk is ramping up its online communications with its patients by uploading its patient database into their RelayHealth online service in order to create secure accounts for all of their patients. The first of several planned uploads contained the patient email address and demographic and diagnoses information for more than 35,000 patients seen by Jayhawk providers. Nearly 45% of the patients that were sent email invitations to utilize Jayhawk's online service accepted the invitation within the first three days.
By accepting the invitation to use RelayHealth, patients can finish the registration process and complete their Personal Health Record, and if appropriate, records for their dependents. Then patients can communicate with their doctors and staff online instead of using the phone for appointment scheduling, lab and test results delivery, referrals, and online consultations — webVisits®.
RelayHealth services are provided at no cost to patients with the exception of the webVisit, an online medical interview that gathers key data about a patient's symptoms and relays it quickly and concisely to their doctor. Patients with health coverage through Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City can enjoy a webVisit as a covered benefit that costs them less than an in-person visit while affording them the convenience of accessing care online from their own doctor, saving valuable time.
Because the secure data uploads include information about patient diagnoses, Jayhawk physicians will be armed with more information about the patient's health record when prescribing at the point of care. RelayHealth eScript™ service will increase quality of patient care by reducing the possibility of prescribing errors and supporting online detection of possible drug interactions. It will also bring greater efficiency to Jayhawk clinics by reducing the number of pharmacy calls and call backs. RelayHealth's eScript is the only e-Prescribing solution that connects all parties in the prescribing transaction, including the healthcare consumer. eScript offers physicians best-in-class e-Prescribing features such as formulary status, interaction checking, and electronic submission to virtually all retail and mail order pharmacies. In less than one month after the upload, Jayhawk physicians generated more than 2,100 eScripts.
"We are very pleased with the results we've been seeing, not only in the use of e-Prescribing but also with our patients' acceptance and use of the online consultation with their physician for non-urgent care" said Carrie Jordan, chief operating officer of Jayhawk Primary Care. "We plan to run a monthly patient upload and continue to promote our online service to our patients. It's a simple and cost effective way to improve the quality of patient care and practice efficiency and, at the same time, provide our patients with greater access to our team."
"Jayhawk has been a leader in deploying Internet-based services to improve healthcare processes," says Giovanni Colella, MD, president and chief executive officer of RelayHealth. "We are proud to have them as a client organization, and look forward to increasing the benefit we can bring to their providers and their patients through the webVisit reimbursement contracts we share with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City."
About Jayhawk Primary Care
Jayhawk Primary Care is a wholly owned subsidiary of the University of Kansas Hospital
and is comprised of six different locations around the Kansas City area: Blue Ridge
Family Physicians, Creekwood Family Care, Family Care of Independence, KU Med West,
Mission Family Health Care and Picture Hills Family Medicine. These offices represent
30 different primary care providers specializing in family practice, internal medicine
and pediatrics. The offices are located in Kansas and Missouri. Visit www.kumed.com.
About RelayHealth Corporation
RelayHealth is the premier provider of secure, online healthcare communication services. The
RelayHealth platform connects patients, clinicians, payers and pharmacies to improve clinical
productivity, create administrative efficiencies, reduce costs and enhance patient satisfaction.
Medical practices can quickly deploy RelayHealth to realize immediate results such as increased
physician productivity and reduced phone volume. With the RelayHealth Interoperability Toolkit,
practices can also integrate RelayHealth with most major commercial or custom electronic
medical record and practice management systems. RelayHealth's robust suite of solutions for
the medical office includes secure messaging featuring the webVisit®, and end to end e-prescribing
through eScript™. The RelayHealth communications platform also enables care management and
continuity of care through tools such as a Patient Health Record that interoperates with
physician and payer clinical systems. For more information, visit www.relayhealth.com.
