A Washington, D.C., post-acute care center is building an Internet-based electronic health records system to allow patients and their families to better manage their health after patients leave the hospital.

Golden Living and Microsoft are collaborating on building the enterprise application using Microsoft Amalga Unified Intelligence System (UIS) to bridge disparate internal and external systems storing data in otherwise incompatible formats, including hospitals, public and private payers, independent physicians, and post-acute services. Golden Living is the first post-acute care organization to adopt Amalga UIS, the companies said in a joint statement.

The goal is to do a better job managing chronic diseases, improve clinical outcomes, and substitute early intervention and prevention for costly hospitalization.

"The potential is there for significant improvements in healthcare quality and cost efficiency -- exactly the kind of results that are being sought in the healthcare reform," said Golden Living president and CEO Neil Kurtz, M.D., in a statement.

Acute care facilities like Golden Living, which include nursing homes, are different from other healthcare providers in that the patient is frequently not managing his or her own care, said Brad Savage, senior vice president and chief information officer for Golden Living, in a phone interview with InformationWeek. Often, the patient is a senior citizen, and the person managing care is family member.

People seeking ongoing care after hospitalizations use multiple healthcare providers for recovery and for treating chronic conditions. Few of them see the hospital patient record, and fewer still are linked electronically to provide coordinated, high-quality care, Golden Living said.

"Golden Living selected Amalga UIS in part for the ability to link a patient's personal health information stored in Microsoft HealthVault with the patient's data stored in Golden Living systems. HealthVault is an online personal health application platform that lets people gather, store and share health information online," Golden Living said.