Important news from HSX from the third quarter of 2018:
HIE Updates —
Grant Monies Help More Organizations to Begin Participating in Health Information Exchange
This year, the Pennsylvania Department of Human Servicesprovided CMS grants to connect hospitals, nursing homes, and ambulatory practices to health information exchange and the Pennsylvania Patient & Provider Network (P3N). HSX is pleased to report that it completed all deadlines for these grants. The resulting funding will now benefit more than 30 facilities in the Greater Delaware Valley region in their data exchange capabilities. The effort to meet the needed milestones and qualify these provider facilities has also meant new members for HSX (e.g., Tower Health) and growth of certain participant categories (e.g., post-acute care organizations.)
Jefferson Health New Jersey Kicks Off NJ Data Feeds to HSX
HealthShare Exchange is receiving patient notifications for the first time from New Jersey facilities! The hospitals of Jefferson Health New Jersey are now providing admission, discharge, transfer (ADT) feeds to HSX for relay to members participating in the Encounter Notification Service. This summer, Jefferson’s Washington Township Hospital, Stratford Hospital, and Cherry Hill Hospital began to provide this data, used in alerts on patient activity among HSX membership.
CMIOs Help HSX Outline Next Steps in Data Services
In October, HealthShare Exchange held a gathering of regional chief medical information officers to discuss how to make HSX data more available and more useful to their physicians and other clinical staff. Harm Scherpbier, MD, HSX’s new chief medical information officer, moderated the roundtable in which his fellow CMIOs heard updates about, and shared input on, these topics:
- ways to improve the HSX Clinical Activity History service
- steps for enhancing HSX’s ability to monitor use of query replies to medical staff end-users
- prospects for a search capability of the HSX clinical data repository from within the electronic medical record interface
- cooperative efforts needed to gather radiology reports from more members and to make them available within the EHR workflow.
- other post-acute care organizations the members would like HSX to engage for data exchange.
The CMIO group will continue to meet in the coming months.
Doylestown First to Share Radiology Reports through the Exchange
HSX is now receiving its first radiology feed! The data comes from Doylestown Hospital and consists of radiology reports providing diagnostic interpretation of images. This step is an exciting expansion of data types that HSX can offer to the shared community, and it will benefit patients as it gives healthcare providers more complete results from imaging tests. Providers can access the information through the HSX clinical data repository.
HSX Wins National Data Quality Award
A big (self- ) congratulations to HealthShare Exchange for winning the Strategic Health Information Exchange Collaborative (SHIEC) 2018 Achievement Award for Data Quality. The national recognition is based on HSX achievements (in partnership with DiameterHealth) to standardize continuity of care documents (CCDs) provided to HSX participating members.
Listen to a Broadcast Conversation About Health Information Exchange in the Region
Don’t miss the podcast that HealthShare Exchange and Independence Blue Cross recorded this summer through 1210 WPHT Talk Radio Philadelphia: How HSX builds Philly value! Creating the exchange and what’s next. Matt Cabrey, excecutive director of Select Greater Philadelphia and senior vice president of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce (center) interviewed Marty Lupinetti, HSX president (right) and Rich Snyder, MD, HSX board member and Independence senior vice president and chief medical officer (left). Listen or download now.
Population Health updates —
HSX’s Population Health Program, has a variety of initiatives underway:
- The program officially branded its population health data analytics and visualization tool as the “GRID” (Gather, Report, Identify, and Determine). This self-service population health tool provides access to de-identified encounter and clinical data, such as demographic data, diagnosis, allergies, conditions, medications, immunization, social determinants of health, and other provider-generated data. The GRID will have a soft launch at the HSX annual meeting in November. It will be available for HSX participants and public health authorities in the first quarter of 2019. See a GRID case study here.
- The HSX pop health team has delivered reports on use of medical services to health system leadership. The analysis covers the first and second quarters of 2018 and compares utilization at those entities to the HSX commmunity overall, in the areas of average length of stay, readmissions, and high utilizers. The program will develop similar reports for executives of health plans, ACOs, and ambulatory participants.
- HSX has kicked off its Opioid Crisis Task Force, under the direction of HSX board member Sue Freeman, MD, chief medical officer of Temple University Health System, and Martin Lupinetti, HSX President. The task force will identify and implement health-information-technology and data-sharing solutions to help in understanding and combatting the opioid epidemic in the Greater Philadelphia Region. The task force is made up of representatives from across the HSX membership, including Thomas Farley, MD, the City of Philadelphia Health Commissioner.
- HSX announced its partnership with Onpoint Health Data to quality control and report CPC+ data for its region. The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has launched Comprehensive Primary Care Plus (CPC+) as a national advanced primary care medical home model that aims to strengthen primary care through regionally-based multi-payer payment reform and care delivery transformation. Independence Blue Cross and Aetna have selected HSX as the data aggregator for the Greater Phila. CPC+ program. HSX will generate quarterly reports for CPC+ practices.
Innovation Updates —
HSX Innovation, Research and Development(IRD) has had a busy quarter advancing the technology and data exchange offerings available to the HSX community. HSX IRD’s MarketStreet is a platform that invites outside companies to connect with HSX HIE aggregated data and direct EHR connections in order to enhance these companies’ existing applications and services.
MarketStreet streamlines the process of technical implementation and health information access, resulting in increased efficiencies and cost savings for consumer-application developers and for HSX members who use third-party platforms to support their care delivery. This quarter, HSX IRD has:
- developed new APIs to allow for both broader and more-targeted data exchange
- upgraded its APIs for compliance with the HL7 FHIR API standard
- enhanced the MarketStreet Sandbox with more robust patient data, including opioid data to support unique solutions in data exchange that combat the ongoing epidemic
- made great strides in the MarketStreet business and financial models, in order to contribute additional financial stability and revenue diversification to HSX.
Contact us, learn more, sign up for services.
This year, the HealthShare Exchange community service day was special for the HSX team. On a warm day in August, the staff worked at a Philadelphia public school, K-8, that had only two computers. By end of day, the school had 100 working computers with internet connections, thanks to donated machines & sweat. Learn more –– see the photos and the media coverage.
HSX held its Bring Your Children to Work Day on August 3rd. We had a great crew of future healthcare CEOs, chief medical information officers, chief information security officers, and chief technology officers. It was a wild old time with office-wide tag & foosball and, of course, goodies.