Available at wnyhealthelink.com/2020
BUFFALO, NY, February 8, 2021 – HEALTHeLINK, the health information exchange (HIE) for Western New York, continues to play a vital role in the delivery and quality of patient care. As highlighted in the HEALTHeLINK 2020 Report to the Community, the value of HIE has never been more evident.
“We understand the unique and critical role HEALTHeLINK has to securely share clinical information and to also support our health care community in times of crisis,” said Dan Porreca, executive director, HEALTHeLINK. “We proved it once again as throughout the pandemic, HEALTHeLINK has enabled treating providers to securely obtain their patients’ current health information where it’s needed, when it’s needed. We also continue to support the community with our core services including alert notifications and health record lookup. As the numbers show, even more providers and practices are utilizing HEALTHeLINK for improved, more efficient coordination of patient care.”
When the coronavirus outbreak began to surface in early 2020, HEALTHeLINK worked in close partnership with county health departments and the New York State Department of Health to quickly mobilize several services to support epidemiology, surveillance, and other community response efforts that continue to be actively utilized today. Since March, use of patient record lookup by county and state health departments more than doubled. In that same timeframe more than 5.4 million COVID-related alert notifications were delivered to participating providers.
A few of the major highlights from HEALTHeLINK’s 2020 Report to the Community include:
- More than 10 million alert notifications, which included real time notification on patients’ admissions, discharges, and transfers, including local emergency department visits, were delivered to participating providers in 2020.
- Patient record lookup which enables participating HEALTHeLINK providers to instantly access a consented patient’s clinical record and obtaining information such as test results, medication history, etc. totaled nearly six million.
- In early 2020, HEALTHeLINK launched HEALTHeOUTCOMES, a community population health tool that currently utilizes clinical data from HEALTHeLINK data sources and claims data from BlueCross BlueShield of Western New York, Independent Health, and Univera Healthcare.
- HEALTHeLINK is among the first HIEs in the country to achieve National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) Data Aggregator Validation status, ensuring the integrity of clinical data received from its data sources to support HEDIS quality reporting requirements.
- Over the next two years HEALTHeLINK is working as part of the Healthy Community Alliance task force for community information exchange to explore and ensure the integration of social needs data with patient clinical data to provide a holistic view of a patient’s needs and challenges.
- Finally, in 2020 alone, the HEALTHeLINK team worked on a total of 86 different products focused on improving the HIE foundation and enhancing the services offered to its participants across the health care community.
To view the 2020 HEALTHeLINK Report to the Community, please visit wnyhealthelink.com/2020.
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About HEALTHeLINK: HEALTHeLINK is a collaboration among hospitals, physicians, health plans and other health care providers in the eight counties of western New York State to securely exchange clinical information to improve the quality of care, enhance patient safety and mitigate health care costs. HEALTHeLINK is a Qualified Entity of the Statewide Health Information Network for New York (SHIN-NY), which enables providers to access their patients’ data from across the state. HEALTHeLINK is also a founding member of the Strategic Health Information Exchange Collaborative (SHIEC), the national trade association of health information exchanges. Providers and patients can visit wnyhealthelink.com or @HEALTHeLINK on both Facebook and Twitter for more information.