As of July 1, 2016, the remaining employees at Maine Coast Memorial Hospital will switch over to the EMHS Medical Plan for their health insurance coverage. Approximately 110 new subscribers will join the plan, which is administered by Geisinger Health Plan with population health coordination and services provided through Beacon Health. About 400 non-union employees switched to the EMHS Plan on April 1 of this year.  

Sandy Schmand is the Information Systems (IS) and data manager for Beacon Health, and this role keeps her pretty busy. Her duties include organizing and managing all of the data for the ACO (accountable care organization) as it flows in and out of the organization. The sheer volume of data, downloads, reports, and remote access needs has grown tremendously during the past couple of years, and Sandy's job reflects that growth.

  

Her career has brought her from her early days at Norumbega Medical Group helping to grow it from one to six practices and implement the Centricity EMR, to positions within Eastern Maine Medical Center and EMHS managing growth, finances, and facilities, to finally joining Beacon two years ago.

  

Some of the more interesting challenges for Sandy involve managing the data through a system of shared folders for staff across Beacon Health to access, but only as needed. With protected patient information access is tightly controlled and yet easily gained by those who should rightfully have it. Patient information is managed carefully from its receipt from practices, Medicare or a commercial health plan, through important editing, merging and "scrubbing", on to incorporation into Beacon Health's proprietary database, and finally adaptation and use for analysis and reporting.  

  

  

In today's healthcare environment, data management is first and foremost about security and privacy. Protected data must be watched and tracked every moment, and at every exchange. The artistry comes from assuring this security along with ease of access for those who justifiably need to use the data for important patient care and business management purposes. Complex matrices of access rights are maintained for users inside and outside of Beacon Health and its partner organizations. Training and extensive documentation is required to establish these relationships, and strict compliance with rules and regulations is necessary at every step.  

  

To allow access to appropriate folders by those outside of Beacon Health, SharePoint is now being used to set up differential data rights according to the user. Each user logging on to SharePoint sees a different, customized site that reflects their privileges and permissions. Beacon Health's ability to track users and data access is critical to our compliance and security efforts.

  

"SYSTEMNESS"

Since Beacon Health is part of EMHS, we are challenged to integrate for efficiency and the benefits of our larger partner, yet maintain our separateness and security to protect patient information and the proprietary information of all non-EMHS participating providers and organizations. This balancing act can be tough at times, but the design of the larger EMHS system has enabled Beacon Health to accomplish this without sacrificing speed and capacity.

  

About Beacon Health, Sandy says, "What excites me the most is managing change. Also, it's great to see our practices changing, adding wellness and prevention, and caring for the whole patient." She's pleased to see more people across Maine taking note of Beacon Health. Certainly, her work on essential IS systems at Beacon Health has a lot to do with that!