Important news from HSX April-July 2019:
HIE Updates —
HSX Broadens Service Area to Include More of NJ
HealthShare Exchange (HSX) continues to expand the regional footprint of its services and membership. With Penn Medicine Princeton and VirtuaPhysicianPartners among the recent members of the health information exchange (HIE), HSX is bridging the river with health information technology to help Pennsylvania and New Jersey providers offer more-informed and proactive care, including for the many patients who travel between the states for their care. Find out more, read the press release.
PA Plan of National Insurer Now a Participating Member of HSX
HealthShare Exchange has added Centene as the latest healthcare insurer to become a member of the exchange. The participation come through Centene’s Pennsylvania Medicaid plan, PA Health & Wellness. Centene, based in St. Louis, joins a list of national and local health plans who contribute to, and make use of, HSX data.
Since its inception, HSX has helped to set a standard for involvement of payers in health information exchanges. Claims-based insurer data makes possible such important HSX services as Automated Care Team Finder and Clinical Activity History. Health plans also make use of HSX’s Encounter Notification Service and Clinical Data Repository. Each of these offerings improves patient healthcare, aiding care management. And, each new insurer participant enriches data available through the exchange.
HSX Strengthens Senior Leadership with Key Appointments
HSX is proud to highlight three new hires. These important team members joined HSX in the third quarter of his year, adding to senior-level expertise at the organization:
Don Reed is HSX’s new Senior Vice President, Chief Operating Officer and Privacy Officer. Don was formerly Vice President and Chief Information Officer (CIO) at Crozer-Keystone Health System. See Don’s full bio.
Brian Wells is HSX’s new Chief Technology Officer and Chief Information Security Officer. Brian was formerly the Associate Vice President of Health Technology and Academic Computing for the University of Pennsylvania Health System / Perelman School of Medicine. See Brian’s full bio.
Bill Marella is HSX’s new Senior Project Manager covering CPC+ data aggregation and other activities of HSX’s Population Health Program. Bill formerly directed the program in patient safety organizations at ECRI Institute. See Bill’s full bio.
New Location and Offices Helping to Advance HSX Mission
At the beginning of this summer, HSX moved into its new location in the American College of Physicians building in the Franklin Square / Independence Mall section of the Philadelphia. The move accommodates HSX’s growth and expands space for staff and member visitors. With views and amenities inspiring innovation, service, and shared vision, the new offices represent HSX’s next stage of evolution as a broad-based data aggregator and innovation hub.
HSX Staffers Contribute Service Day to HSX member MANNA
HealthShare Exchange offered its staff’s volunteer time for a day to support HSX member organization MANNA’s food preparation and nutritional support services. HSXer’s became part of the MANNA kitchen staff for a morning! Read about the event and see the pictures.
Innovation Updates —
MarketStreet: the New Entity
This year, HSX Market Street (HSXMS) became a wholly-owned for-profit subsidiary of the nonprofit HSX. MarketStreet is the innovation platform that accelerates new products and services through single-source integration with patient health data. MarketStreet will bring its first set of partner companies into its Dataline program this year. Find out more.
HSXMS Tech Week Event Highlights Need for Accessible Patient Health Data
In May, at the American College of Physicians building, HSX held a capacity-attended panel event as part of Philly Tech Week. Experts from across the spectrum of health information technology helped the audience make the connection between needs and trends in interoperability, clinical data repositories, and care improvement as it relates to innovation platforms such as HSX MarketStreet. Learn more and see the photos.
HSX Hackathon Inspires Teams to Innovate
At the beginning of June, innovators earned recognition and cash prizes in the second iteration of the annual HSX MarketStreet Hackathon series: Always Hacking in Philadelphia: The Consumer Consent Edition. Across three days, teams brainstormed and developed application-based services powered by MarketStreet sandbox data. Find out more about the event and the winning solutions. See the photos.
Population Health updates —
HSX Primary Care Quality Contract Renewal
In July, HSX renewed its role as the data aggregator for the Greater Philadelphia Comprehensive Primary Care Plus (CPC+) Program. CPC+ is the latest medical-home model for the Medicare program, and is an initiative that seeks to increase healthcare quality and efficiency while reducing costs. HSX is contracted for this service by Deloitte and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
Participating CPC+ practices receive actionable feedback, including through quarterly reports on 15 CPC+ quality measures, via a web portal that can help to guide clinical decision-making. Quality measures are generated for Medicare Advantage and Fee for Service enrollees from claims data provided by HSX members Independence Blue Cross and Aetna, as well as CMS.
HSX Helps Expand Access to Care for PA Seniors
HSX and its partners are helping to close a gap between the number of senior citizens eligible for prescription assistance and those who receive these benefits. Having access to affordable drugs may help patients be more compliant with their prescriptions and less likely to ration drugs they may need to manage chronic illnesses.
HSX partnered with Benefits Data Trust (BDT) and Mercy Health System to mine HSX’s Encounter Notification Service for potential beneficiaries of PACE — the Pennsylvania Department of Aging’s prescription assistance program for low income seniors. BDT contacted potential recipients after recent hospitalizations, a point when patients tend to be most receptive to this type of support. The process brought an estimated $250,000 in benefits to 70 homes in Pennsylvania. HSX and BDT are presenting these results at the DASH (Data Across Sectors for Health) national All In conference October 16, 2019, in Baltimore.
Attention PCPs: Sign Up for Opioid Alerts for Your Patients
HSX’s Opioid Crisis Task Force is now in the process of rolling out a service important to you, the provider, with regards to the current opioid epidemic across the region: through HSX’s Encounter Notification Service, your practice can now receive alerts when your subscribed patients are discharged with an opioid-related diagnosis. HSX has established these condition-specific alerts based on admission, discharge, transfer (ADT) data from the region’s medical facilities. This is your chance to know when your patients have been discharged with opioid-related conditions and quickly follow up to connect them with addiction recovery resources. Contact us at memberservices@healthshareexchange.org to sign up for this service.
Profile: HSX Project Manager, Engagement & Adoption
This quarter we highlight Meg Getzfread who manages projects as part of HSX’s Engagement and Adoption (E&A) staff — the team that seeks to expand implementation and use of HSX services across its broad range of members and prospective members. Meg joined HSX in April 2018 and rapidly gained a range of E&A responsibilities, currently including:
- implementing a data-feed hub to HSX’s Clinical Data Repository for onboarding of multiple provider organizations that use ECW (eClinical Works) for their electronic health record systems
- coordinating HSX’s Pennsylvania HIE onboarding grant
- overseeing HSX’s grant from the New Jersey Innovation Institute (NJII) to establish HIE connection with three New Jersey facilities of Genesis HealthCare (a provider of short-term post-acute, rehabilitation, skilled nursing, and long-term care services).
“Working at HSX as a part of the Engagement and Adoption team has been so rewarding for me,” says Meg. “I love going to ambulatory practices, skilled nursing facilities, and other healthcare organizations to increase their use of HSX services to improve their patients’ care.”
Meg is a graduate of Penn State University. In her personal time, she is kept busy supporting her athletic grade-school daughter’s track and soccer events.
Meg will be speaking, with HSX teammate Vicki Freedman, at the Pennsylvania Health Care Association 2019 Annual Convention and Trade Show, September 26th, 2019, in King of Prussia, Pa., on the topic of how health information exchange can benefit patients and providers in post-acute-care facilities from admission through discharge.