NFL Teams Use EHR Systems To Streamline Care
By Megan Williams, contributing writer
EHRs are useful beyond just the world of hospitals and the military. Anywhere a human body is treated, they can bring benefits and innovation. This includes athletic spaces.
Amid recent controversy of the toll injuries take on players, the NFL has instituted new measures to address player safety. Of course, with treatment comes the need to track patient progress, and properly record, and use data. To help achieve those goals, all 32 teams have been outfitted with an interoperable EHR and related systems.
HIMSS15
Two representatives, Matthew Matava, MD, immediate past president of the NFL Physicians Society, and Michelle McKenna-Doyle, chief information officer at the NFL presented at HIMSS15’s “View From The Top” session and covered topics including how EHR technologies are being used in the league to streamline care coordination and speed up injury assessment, according to Healthcare IT News.
According to McKenna-Doyle, the implementation represents a unique-use case of the technology, “Unlike your own personal medical record, the players’ medical records become part of their employment. All the regular HIPAA protections apply, but the record not only transfers around when players are moved from physical location to point of treatment, but also when they may get traded and move to different teams. It has to be able to move with them.”
eClinicalworks provides the EHR, a system that integrates with all pharmaceutical, clinical, video, and imaging systems that the league uses to identify and address injuries. She continues, “Our goal was to provide a comprehensive record, medical history and images without delay — meaning it needed to be available immediately when treating injuries. Storing images in a centralized location would not have solved the problem, as the images would have to be accessible in multiple places at multiple times.”
Player Involvement
Additionally, the league has implemented the X2 Concussion Assessment tool and made it available on the sidelines during games. It is accessible using Microsoft Surface tablets. Dr. Matava stressed the importance of the speed that the mobile technology brings to the field,
“It’s our job to determine in a very rapid fashion if a player has been concussed. And if so, determine what treatment should be rendered. The technology allows us to do this, which we had never been able to do previously in the field of sports medicine.”
The X2 is pre-loaded with baseline data on each player, along with appropriate treatment and diagnostic protocols. In just five minutes, it determines whether a player should be allowed to continue play.
Additionally, players have access to their own records and are free to get second opinions at team expense.