Oschner Health is a healthcare system that specializes in cancer care, cardiology, and transplant operations. The non-profit organization is eighty years in age and places emphasis on the discovery of new treatment and developing technology in the healthcare industry. At present, the healthcare entity employs over 34,000 with nearly 5,000 of those individuals being qualified physicians that operate across ninety fields of healthcare. Ochsner Health has recently announced an integration with the Epic HER. In August 2022, Ochsner published the information which will make them the first organization in the nation to use Epic’s integration, specifically the Epic Orders and Results Anywhere integration, with their own product to improve healthcare outcomes of patients with their clinician.
Epic partnered with Tempus in November of last year to improve oncology outcomes through the development of technology and a significant roll out of large-panel genomic sequencing testing. Using this, physicians belonging to Ochsner Health can issue testing and view biomarkers for their patients from their electronic health record (EHR) in a quicker and more efficient manner. With this information, clinicians will make more informed and personalized treatment options for ill patients suffering from cancer. In addition to this, Ochsner physicians across the forty-seven general hospitals and hundreds of facilities they are situated in, can avail of genomic testing for their patients with the click of a button. This testing reveals therapeutic options for patients with previous clinical trials as a reference to present likely outcome. The system runs with data being sent directly to Epic which shows clinicians both clinical and genomic data belonging to their patients. This announcement is important in the context of the EHR system in the United States. As electronic healthcare continues to develop, it is imperative that the capabilities of an EHR to store and allow easy access to discrete information such as biomarkers of patients. As this continues, more organizations will restructure the way they operate to integrate electronic data storage in their facilities.
“This integration greatly enriches the precision care we provide to patients with cancer,” said Marc Matrana, M.D., medical director of precision medicine at Ochsner Health, in a statement. “Through efficient, streamlined access to discrete genomics data, we can determine a patient’s unique cancer and tailor treatment for the best possible outcome.”
