Northeast health systems push HIT adoption

By Kyle Hardy and Patty Enrado, Healthcare IT News

The Brooklyn Health Information Exchange, Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems and Fallon Clinic, a Boston-based health system, are trying to push information technology adoption to take advantage of federal stimulus funds being released in 2011.

The three health systems have been early adopters of IT and look to improve patient safety, care and the exchange of health data by connecting with health information exchanges and regional health information organizations, according to a recent white paper, "ARRA 2010: Working Toward a Connected Healthcare System Through Bests Practices and Collaboration."

The Brooklyn Health Information Exchange, a group of care providers and payers created in 2008, was tasked with overseeing the technical implementations and strategic initiatives of health information exchange in and around New York City.

"Through the pilot activation of the clinical data exchange in late 2008, BHIX has made significant contributions to setting a framework for facilitating patient-centric care and promoting improved healthcare quality, affordability and outcomes for New Yorkers," said Irene Koch, executive director of BHIX.

“BHIX stakeholders guided the IT systems implementation process, thereby ensuring that the chosen technology incorporates critical clinical, technical and privacy considerations. This end-user driven process has been key to provider adoption and community support,” said Koch.

Rachel Block, the deputy commissioner for the Office of Health Information Technology Transformation in the New York State Department of Health, said the state has been developing a state- and regional-level public-private partnership governance model to help derive a consensus on policies and standards and has distributed grants to support the build-out of a statewide HIE infrastructure and adoption.

“Regional health information organizations and other groups are working together across the state to facilitate adoption and health information exchange connectivity,” she said.

Block said the state has tried to achieve this by involving government agencies, healthcare providers and other consumer organizations in building technical, security and interoperability regulations for the implementation of EHRs.

Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems is deploying health IT to become a top-rated health system, according to the white paper. EMHS is looking to exchange health data and clinical images from Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, Maine, with other regional providers through its regional PACS solution, said Eric Hartz, EMMC's chief medical information officer.

"A major effort is underway to plan and implement the full range of the ARRA requirements for all of the EMHS acute-care hospitals and provider practices,” Hartz said. “This will bring all of the acute-care components of EMHS to the same level as EMMC and will increase the integration of information with other provider organizations throughout Maine.”

Other initiatives include implementing e-prescribing solutions and electronic medical records for EMMC’s Oncology Center, as well as a barcode medication management system.

The Fallon Clinic, a Boston-based health system, has been live with an EHR since 2006, said Larry Garber, the system's medical director of informatics. The clinic deploys a regional health information exchange called SAFEHealth.org, an  HIE infrastructure developed with the Fallon Community Health Plan and the UMass Memorial Health Care System.

“SAFEHealth.org is a federated edge proxy server HIE where patients give opt-in consent for which specific organizations can share their data, moving clinical documents from EHR to EHR,” said Garber.

Patty Enrado, a contributing editor for Healthcare IT News, wrote the white paper.