Complete electronic medical records are vital to patients who need coordinated care from multiple providers. Such records are also needed for doctors who seek insurance reimbursements for their services.
But often those electronic records are incomplete, which isnβt good for patients and means doctors often have to file multiple times with insurance companies to get paid. Thatβs lost time and revenue.
A professor at the ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½ has developed a computer model that allows healthcare facilities to determine how complete their patientsβ electronic records are in real time. Once doctors or their front office staff can spot the issues, they can address them. That would translate into more complete information so doctors can make better decisions about patient care. Also, this technology should translate into better reimbursement rates.
βOur method doesnβt spot what is missing in each individual electronic record,β says health management and informatics Associate Professor Varadraj Gurupur, who was assisted in this pursuit by Ayan Nasir, a doctoral student with the ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½ School of Medicine. βBut it gives each record a rating of how complete it is based on whatβs missing. For example, if a work phone number is missing, thatβs one score. But if blood test records are missing, thatβs a higher score because that data is more important in the treatment of the patient. I think this is a valuable tool for patient care, but also for rural clinics that really need to be sure to get reimbursed for their services.β
These rural clinics often struggle, Gurupur says. Cash flow is always an issue and can make the difference between staying open and closing. That often leaves residents who live in these areas hours away from the next closest medical care facility.
The usefulness of this technology and possible commercialization opportunities were investigated with the financial support of the National Science Foundation I-Corps grant, and the university has now received a patent. That means it is available to license and that healthcare offices and hospitals can begin using it.
Gurupur, who is a computer scientist by training, recognized the need for the technology after working in a hospital administration office doing data processing while he earned his masterβs degree in computer and information sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Because he knew computers, he was soon finding ways to connect systems and he started to spot gaps.
He joined ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½ in 2014. Thanks to the I-Corps grant he obtained in 2019 he was able to conduct a national survey, which looked at the challenges with standardizing electronic health records. He and his team members spent seven weeks traveling and interviewing healthcare professionals at conferences to discuss the challenges and discovered his idea could potentially make a difference for patients and doctors.
Gurupur has multiple degrees including a doctorate in computer engineering from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Before joining ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½ he was an assistant professor at Louisiana Tech University and Texas A&M University – Commerce. He also had industry experience having worked in multiple computer-related positions at the Alzheimerβs Disease Center in Birmingham and the UAB Hospital. Aside from teaching and conducting research at ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½, Gurupur currently works as a walk-in researcher at Veterans Affairs in Orlando.
