Cherry Hill, Camden County, NJ — HealthShare Exchange (HSX), the nonprofit health information exchange for the Greater Philadelphia area, has increased its reach by expanding data services to more healthcare provider organizations in New Jersey. Following on the addition last year of services to Jefferson Health Cherry Hill, Stratford, and Washington Township (the former Kennedy Health System), HSX is now exchanging patient health information with Penn Medicine’s Princeton Health and will soon do so with VirtuaPhysicianPartners™, the clinically integrated network of practices associated with Virtua health system. HealthShare Exchange has also begun sending patient data to the New Jersey Health Information Network (NJHIN), the entity designated by New Jersey to coordinate health information exchange in the state.
“With the first-rate medical centers and providers in this market, a significant number of patients travel between southern New Jersey and the counties of the Philadelphia area for their care,” explains Bill Hanson, Chief Medical Information Officer and Vice President at Penn Medicine. “It’s important that their medical information travel with them — or in this case ahead of them — so that it is available to support treatment in any health venue they visit in our region. As a founding member of the exchange, this is the value that we receive from HSX.”
In addition, exchange data is available to other HSX members that have a presence in New Jersey, including the physican practices of St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, as well as those of Jefferson Health and Penn Medicine. Participants in the state also include long-term care organizations such as Genesis and Holy Redeemer.
“These connections are logical extensions of HSX’s growing role as the health information exchange for our broader metro region and wider Pennsylvania and New Jersey medical service area,” says Neil Lubarsky, Senior Vice President for Finance, Strategic Partnerships, Ventures and Innovation at Jefferson Health, a founding member of HSX.
Since 2013, HSX has established health information exchange in the region so that important patient information and records are available at whatever point of care individuals seek medical services in the Delaware Valley, including throughout southeastern Pennsylvania. Supported with membership fees from area health systems, healthcare insurers, and a variety other types of health and community organizations, HSX serves to improve care by making evaluation and treatment more informed wherever patients go. HSX’s repository of clinical data, and its alerting and medical record history services, help to reduce medical costs, make care more proactive and less redundant, and thus improve patient outcomes.
About a quarter of patients who receive care on the Pennsylvania side of the Greater Philadelphia medical service area also receive care in New Jersey. With data on more than 9 million of the region’s patients, and with 14,000 providers and nearly all Philadelphia-area hospitals participating in the exchange, HSX is now steadily expanding services across the river in New Jersey.
“As the only health information organization sanctioned in both Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and with offices in both states, we are in a unique position to be the facilitator of cross-state exchange,” says Martin Lupinetti, President of HSX. “We are proud to take on this dual-state role as we seek to steadily add to our business partnerships supporting data sharing across the region that continues to make patient care better.”