DRH Health joins MyHealth

MyHealth Access Network (MyHealth) today announced the addition of DRH Health to its health information exchange (HIE) network. The addition of DRH includes Duncan Regional Hospital, Jefferson County Hospital and their 20 integrated clinics to MyHealth. This addition brings MyHealth’s membership to over 300 Oklahoma health care organizations serving more than 85,000 patients daily across more than 1,100 sites of care statewide. 

DRH’s decision to join MyHealth comes in the wake of a new initiative underwritten by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Oklahoma. In an effort to help speed Oklahoma’s recovery, rapidly identify and contain potential new COVID-19 hot spots and ensure that front line health care providers and public health experts have the most current and comprehensive test results, MyHealth is now offering its secure health records portal to all qualified providers in Oklahoma. These services are being made available to all qualified Oklahoma providers thanks to a generous grant from BCBSOK. The new initiative will enable front line health care providers to use MyHealth to reference patient health data, including any test results for COVID-19, in real-time. 

Jay Johnson is the president and chief executive officer of DRH Health as well as the Board Chair of the Oklahoma Hospital Association. He said that providing secure access to health data is key to the long-term goal of making health care more effective and affordable, as well as an important part of the effort to contain COVID-19. 

“Obviously, our doctors need to do know who is testing positive and where those positive tests are coming from when it comes to COVID-19,” said Johnson. “We can’t contain this virus unless we know, in real-time and with a high degree of accuracy, who has contracted it and where MyHealth has played a key role on that front.

“In the long-run, however, all hospitals and health systems need to know more about our patients than just ‘do they have the coronavirus?’ We need to know what medications they are taking, what pre-existing conditions they have, and what other medical treatments they are receiving, in order for us to deliver safe and cost-effective care. MyHealth puts that information in our hands and helps us to strengthen the health care infrastructure, not just here in Duncan, but all across the state.”