ELMIRA, NY – Arnot Health has joined the Rochester Regional Health Information Organization (RHIO), a health information exchange covering a large swath of western New York, an addition that pretty much completes the HIE’s expansion and lets it focus on building usage within its network.

Serving New York’s Southern Tier and parts of northcentral Pennsylvania, Arnot Health operates three hospitals and several dozen speciality practices. Joining the HIE, president and CEO Anthony Cooper said in a press release, “benefits not only [the patients] we serve, but also all of the healthcare professionals who work here.”

Arnot’s Ogden Medical Center and Ira Davenport Memorial Hospital are currently in the exchange, with the networks’ St. Joseph’s Hospital set to join in the coming months.

Arnot joins the Rochester RHIO just as it is finding its groove and nearing financial sustainability, said Kate Rosinski, an RHIO spokesperson. 

[See also: Kansas' two largest health systems share data as state HIE board mulls future.]

The RHIO was created in 2006 with several grants, and is now financing operations with revenue streams from usage-based service fees and subscriptions, with the need for additional grant funding expected only for new projects, Rosinski said.

The RHIO had 1,425 connected physicians at last count, delivering nearly 500,000 clinical results each month, with some 700,000 consenting patients.

Part of the Statewide Health Information Network for New York, the Rochester RHIO uses OptumInsight’s HIE platform. It’s a federated information architecture, Rosinski said, with detailed medical information maintained in separate institutional databases.

With Arnot Health completing the Rochester RHIO's geographic expansion, spanning 13 counties from the New York-Pennsylvania border to Lake Ontartio, Rosinksi said the goal now is to make sure providers within all those networks are using the HIE.