Health Current Providing Critical Real-Time Data for Arizona Surge Line’s Bed Capacity Tracking

Health Current, Arizona’s Health Information Exchange (HIE), is committed to working throughout the COVID-19 pandemic to support the Arizona healthcare community in their collective response. Leveraging existing admission, discharge and transfer (ADT) data from the majority of hospitals and health systems in Arizona, Health Current is pleased to collaborate with Arizona’s hospitals in supplying critical real-time bed capacity data to the Arizona Surge Line.

Surge Line Support
The Arizona Surge Line is a 24/7 statewide phone line developed by the Arizona Department of Health Services (ADHS) for hospitals and other providers to call when they have a COVID-19 patient who needs a level of care they can’t provide. The service helps locate available beds and appropriate care, evenly distributing patient load so that no one system or hospital is overwhelmed. Launched in April 2020, the mission of Surge Line is to:

• Expedite transfer to a higher level of care (e.g. ICU)
• Expedite transfer to a lower level of care (e.g. step-down units, post-acute care facilities)
• Assist with interfacility transport when resources are scarce
• Provide real-time clinical consultation when resources are scarce

According to a recent article in Healthcare IT News about the Arizona Surge Line, existing patient information supplied by Health Current proactively laid the foundation for critical data sharing during the pandemic. “Over the past 10 years, the HIE had already integrated with 95% of the hospitals in the state, which made creating that level of visibility for the Surge Line much faster,” said Charley Larsen, RN, senior director of Banner Health Transfer Services, and temporary RN program director for the COVID-19 response team at the ADHS.

Bed Capacity Tracking
Critical to the success of the Surge Line is the ability to accurately report on bed capacity. The information reflected within the Surge Line’s transfer coordination technology platform is supplied by hospital systems across Arizona via Health Current.  To date, seven hospitals and health systems are actively share real-time bed capacity data via this service, with an additional seven hospitals and health systems in process.

Better Sharing. Better data. Better care.
If you have questions about your hospital participating in real-time bed capacity data reporting to better serve patients in Arizona during the COVID-19 pandemic, please contact your Health Current account manager or our client support team at HIEsupport@healthcurrent.org.

Learn more: COVID-19 HIE Information Center