Combine and conquer: computing from a single database.

Information technology promises to simplify medical management. In practice, large provider organizations often must grapple with multiple systems that are unable to communicate with each other. At The Ohio State University Medical Center (OSUMC), over 30 separate systems stored information about its 2,200 staff physicians and 15,000 referring physicians. Merging all of these data into a single database, the Centralized Provider Database (CPD) with appropriate quality controls dramatically improved physician communications and reduced billing errors and delays. Now approaching its 10-year anniversary, the application continues to deliver outstanding results.