It's no surprise that the majority of the patient records that organizations accessed were for other health care providers or health management organizations within their local community; however, there were a non-negligible number of patient records accessed outside of communities too. For example, users in the Milwaukee community accessed nearly 290 patient records that originated from participants outside their community - even some from as far away as Ashland and Hayward!

Many participating organizations used WISHIN Pulse to access patient records from other participants even when they had point-to-point EHR connectivity available between them. There are several likely reasons for this - one being that WISHIN Pulse contains data, like laboratory and pathology results, that isn't typically available via point-to-point EHR connections. Another reason may be because WISHIN Pulse users can easily view a patient's data from all participating providers in one place without having to know where the patient was previously treated.

Of course, even with a focus on getting users to use the system when treating their patients, we didn't forget about the data. Today, WISHIN Pulse includes data for more than 3.4 million unique patients and nearly 134 million encounters. And this past year several WISHIN Pulse participants began sharing care summaries (CCDAs) with the network - there are now more than 529,000 of them available - and that number is growing every day!

We still have a long way to go but we have no plans on stopping any time soon. We are certain that usage statistics will grow considerably in 2016; all of the current users will have a full year of activity and new users will join them during the year.

If your organization hasn't started integrating WISHIN Pulse into your EHR and your clinical workflows, you could be missing out on valuable clinical data that could influence treatment and care plans for your patients and improve care coordination and transitions between providers or care settings.