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Enabling FHIR-Based Data Integration for Wound Care Across Post-Acute Settings

Client

A US-based wound care organization serving skilled nursing facilities, assisted living centers, and home-based care networks sought to enhance data connectivity across its care operations. The company delivers specialized wound care services within the post-acute care (PAC) continuum and relies heavily on accurate, timely, and compliant patient data to drive quality improvement and care coordination. To achieve better interoperability, the organization aimed to integrate data from PointClickCare (PCC), a leading EHR platform in the PAC segment, with its internal infrastructure, laying the foundation for longitudinal patient visibility and analytics-driven decision-making.

The Challenge: The Challenge

Post-acute care providers face a unique data challenge: patient information often resides in siloed EHR systems, limiting real-time access for clinicians, care coordinators, and compliance teams.
For this organization, all patient data — including demographics, diagnoses, and insurance coverage — were locked within PCC, preventing its reuse in downstream applications such as care coordination dashboards, compliance analytics, and outcome reporting.

The key challenges were:

  • Data Silos: Limited interoperability between PCC and internal databases made it difficult to aggregate patient information across multiple facilities.
  • Lack of Structured Data Access: Existing workflows lacked a standard method (FHIR-based) to retrieve, normalize, and store clinical data.
  • Compliance Sensitivity: As a wound care provider operating across nursing and assisted living settings, strict HIPAA compliance and patient privacy safeguards were non-negotiable.
  • Scalability: The organization needed a foundational integration layer that could later support analytics, reporting, and patient engagement modules.

The TechVariable Approach

TechVariable collaborated closely with the client’s technical leadership to architect and implement a FHIR-driven data integration and synchronization framework that would securely ingest PCC data into the client’s internal SQL Server environment hosted on DigitalOcean.
The engagement focused on Data Integration Enablement, establishing a scalable foundation for future interoperability and analytics initiatives.
Key Solution Components
1. FHIR API Integration
  • Established OAuth 2.0-based authentication with PCC’s FHIR endpoints to securely access patient data.
  • Retrieved structured datasets across Patient, Condition, and Coverage resources, ensuring adherence to FHIR standards.

2. ETL Pipeline Design

Developed a Python-based ETL service to extract, transform, and load PCC data into a normalized SQL Server schema.
Applied data validation, integrity checks, and error handling to ensure accuracy and reliability.
Converted hierarchical FHIR JSON into a relational structure for downstream analytics readiness.

3. Data Synchronization Framework

  • Implemented automated batch synchronization to update patient records on an hourly or daily basis.
  • Included delta updates based on timestamps and change tracking for performance optimization.
  • Configured alerting and retry logic to ensure fault tolerance and high reliability.

4. Secure Architecture

  • Designed a HIPAA-compliant pipeline with end-to-end encryption (TLS) and secret management.
  • Implemented role-based access control and audit logging for all data operations.
  • Provisioned a disaster recovery replica in a separate availability zone to ensure business continuity.

5. Documentation & Knowledge Transfer

  • Delivered full system documentation, schema mapping, and operational handover to the client’s internal team for ongoing maintenance and scaling.

Impact Delivered

This engagement marked a pivotal step toward enabling data interoperability and care continuity within post-acute settings.
Key outcomes included:
  • Seamless interoperability: Established a live data bridge between PCC and the client’s SQL infrastructure, unlocking real-time access to patient demographics, diagnoses, and coverage details.
  • Operational efficiency: Automated data ingestion replaced manual extraction workflows, freeing up clinical and admin time.
  • Analytics readiness: Structured, validated data now supports the creation of care quality, compliance, and financial dashboards.
  • Compliance assurance: Achieved HIPAA-aligned data handling and auditability across all integration components.
  • Scalable foundation: The modular design is now being extended to integrate additional PAC systems and support longitudinal patient care planning.

Tech Stack

  • Integration Layer: Python, FHIR API (PCC), OAuth 2.0
  • Data Engineering: Pandas, SQLAlchemy, Airflow (for orchestration)
  • Database: Microsoft SQL Server (DigitalOcean)
  • Infrastructure: Secure VPC, TLS encryption, secrets management
  • Deployment: CI/CD for ETL jobs, cron-based scheduling
  • Compliance: HIPAA-aligned storage, role-based access control, audit logging

Future Enhancements: Future Enhancements

The client’s long-term roadmap extends beyond integration, aiming to:

  • Expand to real-time synchronization using webhook-based event streaming.
  • Build custom dashboards for wound-care quality tracking and compliance analytics.
  • Integrate with additional data sources (e.g., claims and ADT feeds) for complete longitudinal patient visibility.
  • Enable AI-driven care risk prediction and wound-healing analytics across post-acute facilities.

Summary

Through this engagement, TechVariable enabled a foundational step toward post-acute care data unification by integrating PointClickCare’s FHIR APIs with the client’s internal systems. This integration not only strengthened data access and compliance for wound care management but also paved the way for advanced population health analytics, care coordination, and quality improvement initiatives in the post-acute care ecosystem. By combining healthcare domain knowledge with technical depth in FHIR, ETL, and HIPAA-compliant engineering, TechVariable helped the client turn fragmented PAC data into a single, reliable source of truth for better clinical and operational outcomes.

About TechVariable

TechVariable is a healthcare-first technology services firm trusted by payers, providers, and health-tech innovators for its expertise in interoperability, AI-driven analytics, and compliance-focused solution design. With accelerators like SyncMesh and deep domain expertise, TechVariable delivers fast, secure, and intelligent solutions to solve healthcare’s most pressing operational and clinical challenges.

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