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The Keystone Beacon Community serving central Pennsylvania, one of 17 federally funded communities across the nation serving as model sites for comprehensive use of health information technology, has developed a tool to enable skilled nursing facilities to share patient information, whether it is a paper or electronic health record.

Skilled nursing facilities are mandated to electronically submit patient assessment information to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Systems in what is known as the Minimum Data Set. The new tool extracts the information from the records of consenting patients and reformats it into a Continuity of Care type of document that a health information exchange can electronically transfer to a hospital or other provider of care.

Hospitals also can use the tool to facilitate care transitions when a patient is transferred to a nursing facility. More information is available in a posting on the blog page of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.