Healthcare Information Xchange of New York (HIXNY) announced Friday that it has connected its HIE with the cloud-based electronic health record from athenahealth.

The connection will enable physicians using athenahealth’s EHR service to efficiently access their patients’ community health records supplied by HIXNY’s HIE, which is built on InterSystem’s HealthShare, according to a statement issued Friday by HIXNY.

Healthcare Information Xchange of New York (HIXNY) announced Friday that it has connected its HIE with the cloud-based electronic health record from athenahealth.

The connection will enable physicians using athenahealth’s EHR service to efficiently access their patients’ community health records supplied by HIXNY’s HIE, which is built on InterSystem’s HealthShare, according to a statement issued Friday by HIXNY.

[See also: athenahealth and Physicians Practice rank the payers.]

The groundbreaking initiative continues HIXNY’s focus on sharing and delivering patient data in a secure manner while improving care coordination across Capital Region and Northern New York, the statement said.

“Physician practices that choose athenahealth as their EHR vendor will have proven interoperability with HIXNY’s HIE,” said Scott Momrow, vice president of HIXNY.

“Many healthcare stakeholders today are already sharing information via the HIXNY HIE,” he added. “What’s different about the approach with athenahealth is that their users will now have a bi-directional connection, making it easier for providers to share their information with other participating providers as well as making it much faster for providers to access their patients’ aggregated community health information right in their native EHR system. It is a seamless process that can bring value to health care providers while also improving workflows and efficiency in a practice of any size.” 

Momrow said Intersystem’s software solution, HealthShare “dramatically speeds up” delivery of healthcare information for physicians who use HIEs. 

[See also: InterSystems to provide HIE services for VLER project.]

HIXNY will continue to work with several EHR system vendors to create similar proven connections for physicians and provider offices throughout the area served by HIXNY, Momrow added. With this approach, the EHR vendors typically handle the training and installation of the program while HIXNY will assist practices with the patient consent process.  

“We want to be able to provide those participating with HIXNY multiple options for accessing our services,” Momrow said. “We’re confident that our approach with athenahealth will result in other EHR vendors establishing similar interoperable connections in the near future.”  

Follow Diana Manos on Twitter @DManos_IT_News.