Important news from HSX for August and September:
Jefferson Health – NJ Joins HSX
The membership and services of HealthShare Exchange continue to expand in New Jersey, with the signing of an HSX participation agreement by Jefferson Health – New Jersey (the former Kennedy Health System). Hospitals of the former Kennedy system that will submit and receive patient data over the HSX exchange are the renamed Jefferson Cherry Hill Hospital, Jefferson Stratford Hospital, and Jefferson Washington Township Hospital. Congratulations to these facilities on joining HSX and the Jefferson system!
Systems Receiving Majority of Exchange Notifications from Outside EHRs
A recent analysis of the sources of encounter notifications across the HSX system shows the added value that the exchange brings to its health systems for receiving information updates when their patients undergo care at other health systems that use a different electronic health record (EHR) vendor. Results were dramatic, even when evaluating this mix for several systems on the EHR with the most widespread use in the region. From July through September 2017, notifications from non-Epic facilities constituted the majority of encounter alerts from outside facilities received by these health systems that use Epic as their EHR: Penn Medicine (79 percent), Jefferson Health (65 percent), and Temple Health (87 percent). The analysis illustrates the degree to which patients in the greater Delaware Valley receive care from multiple health systems, the volume of data that providers would not receive if they depended on receiving notifications only from entities that use their same EHR system and, thus, the augmented value that participation in HealthShare Exchange conveys to our medical service area’s health systems that use any EHR system.
CHOP and Grand View Top Off ADT Feeds
The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and Grand View Hospital are now providing admission, discharge, and transfer (ADT) data to HealthShare Exchange. With these additions, nearly all (99 percent) of hospital/health system HSX members are providing an ADT feeds to the regional exchange. CHOP’s ADTs are now supporting HSX’s Encounter Notification Service (ENS) and Grand View’s will be imminently. With ENS, providers take advantage of HSX’s hospital, emergency, and skilled nursing facility patient-encounter alerting service. Using these invaluable notifications, health system and independent ambulatory practitioners, health plans, and accountable care organizations know when their patients interface with more than 45 facilities across the region.
Member Lab Feeds Expand Significantly
Einstein Healthcare Network, Holy Redeemer, Hahnemann University Hospital, and St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children have joined the vanguard of HSX member systems/facilities providing HL7 laboratory data feeds to HSX. This information on test results for patients will enhance HSX’s Clinical Data Repository (CDR), providing more complete information for any HSX members that query recent medical history on these patients from the repository. Most of the lab feeds include general laboratories, blood-bank records, and pathology and microbiology results.
CCDs Now Accompanying ADTs from Main Line and Jeff, as Jeff Also Queries CDR
Main Line Health and Jefferson Health are now submitting continuity of care documents(CCDAs) for hospital and emergency patient encounters to HSX’s Clinical Data Repository. Jefferson’s hospitals and ambulatory practices that use Epic are also now accessing this CDR, querying the repository to retrieve patient clinical information. This makes Jefferson the first HSX member system to access this repository through an Epic EHR.
St. Mary and Crozer Inaugurate HSX Feed to Pennsylvania’s Public Health Gateway
St. Mary Medical Center and Crozer- Keystone Health System have become the first HealthShare Exchange member providers to begin to submit data to Pennsylvania’s Public Health Gateway, via HSX. This electronic sharing of reportable labs (ELR) helps to build the gateway, a registry/database that is a combined effort of the Pa. departments of health and human services. The gateway, which is a component of the P3N (the PA Patient & Provider Network), enables providers, facilities, and health information organizations (HIOs), such as HSX, to access a single secure point of submission for electronic health information sought by various agencies within the Commonwealth.
Roxborough Initiates Automatic Subscribing of Patients to Encounter Notification
Roxborough Memorial Hospital has become the first HSX member facility to go live with the ENS for Hospitals service, provided by HealthShare Exchange. In this service, HSX automatically subscribes patients to the ENS service who are discharged from a hospital or system that is providing an ADT feed. ENS auto-subscription provides notifications back to the participating HSX member hospital about discharged patients who are subsequently admitted within a defined timeframe (e.g. 30 days, 45 days) to HSX member emergency departments and hospitals. ENS for Hospitals gives facilities insight into their discharged patient’s subsequent visits, for both reporting and care coordination purposes.
HSX Describes Pathway to Security
In August, HSX presented on the HITRUST process at the annual meeting of SHIEC (the Strategic Health Information Exchange Collaborative), the national professional and trade organization for health information exchanges. The Health Information Trust Alliance has established a Common Security Framework (CSF) that can be used by all organizations that create, access, store, or exchange sensitive or regulated data. The HITRUST CSF provides an efficient and prescriptive system for managing data security requirements laid out in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and for achieving and demonstrating compliance with this act and other recognized standards for use of restricted information. The HSX presentation described HSX’s experience in attaining HITRUST certification.