Healthix HIE links with Mount Sinai, Northwell exchanges to boost population health
Healthix, a wide-spanning health information exchange in New York State, has connected with the private HIEs run by Long Island's Northwell Health and the Manhattan-based Mount Sinai Health System.
Healthix – billed as the largest public HIE in the U.S. – is built upon InterSystems' HealthShare platform. By linking with Mount Sinai and Northwell Health, which also run on InterSystems, the organizations will be able to share richer and more trustworthy data sets with each other and across New York, making for more effective population health management, officials say.
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Healthix exchanges data from 16 million patients at healthcare organizations throughout greater New York City and Long Island: not just hospitals, but, physician practices, behavioral health facilities, long-term care facilities, payers and more.
"In just a couple months, we are already seeing a deep integration, and the efficiency of providers has increased dramatically," said Donny Patel, director of interoperability and IT at Mount Sinai. He noted that one of the health system's insurance partners is also pursuing use of the platform for care management.
The data flowing through the HIE includes more than just encounter data and labs, also comprising allergies, documents, immunizations, and other data – all available bidirectionally to health organizations across the Empire State.
That information is set to become even more robust and useful. Tom Check, president and CEO of Healthix, points out that clinical information available in real-time to participants in the Healthix network, and across the Statewide Health Information Network of New York, "will soon expand to include the complete Common Clinical Data Set promoted by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology."
[Also: Update: OIG says Mount Sinai owes them $42 million, but hospital says it's 'too late']
In addition to the gains in population health management, participating providers say the expansion has saved them money.
"Connecting our information systems with others was challenging with traditional interfaces, and ongoing maintenance was expensive; we had more than 40 interfaces to manage,” said Vish Anantraman, MD, chief information architect in Northwell Health’s Information Technology group. "Now with just one interface, we can easily send all the data from our systems to Healthix and the SHIN-NY, it is less expensive to operate, and we have richer clinical data for care coordination."
Twitter: @MikeMiliardHITN
Email the writer: mike.miliard@himssmedia.com
