The data-exchange collaboration with MANNA is the the first of its kind for HSX. The partnership between the two organizations has been precedent setting and has received national attention. In 2018, the exchange began providing medical-encounter notification data to the alliance on its clients, as well as access to HSX’s clinical data repository, for look-up of patient medical history. With the data transfer in place, MANNA now knows when one of its clients is admitted or discharged from a medical facility and can access adjusted condition information, allowing its staff dieticians to tailor diets and food deliveries to individuals without the same level of dependence on updates from busy physician offices. The services demonstrate how HIE data can enhance food security for the needy homebound chronically ill. Earlier this year, HSX and MANNA presented this newly functioning system on the world’s largest health information technology stage — HIMSS19.
On this giving-back day, though, HSX employees took on a new, non-health-information-technoloy task: the mid-morning meal-prep shift in MANNA’s kitchen, as the HSXers donned aprons, caps, and gloves, and rolled up their sleeves. The HSX staff chopped, prepped, and seasoned food, moved it to ovens; made sandwiches; filled meal trays, and packaged, labelled, and racked them. They stepped into the production lines like a well-oiled team. Afterward, the group enjoyed a lunch together at the facility, prepared by the MANNA chefs.