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HEALTHeLINK™

HEALTHeLINK releases 2019 Report to the Community

Available at wnyhealthelink.com/2019

BUFFALO, NY – February 2019 – As the health information exchange (HIE) for Western New York, HEALTHeLINK continues to connect health care organizations, allowing for the seamless exchange of clinical information to improve quality of care, enhance patient outcomes and mitigate health care costs. As highlighted in its 2019 Report to the Community, with the HIE foundation well-established, HEALTHeLINK is now taking the next steps to further leverage the clinical data already shared and adding claims data to enable growth areas such as population health and value-based care to better support health care providers and the patients they serve.

“With the comprehensive community wide patient data we have been entrusted with HEALTHeLINK continues to demonstrate the documented value when providers use the services we offer,” said Dan Porreca, HEALTHeLINK’s executive director. “HEALTHeLINK is uniquely positioned to support the increasing number of value-based care programs and are excited about the prospect of expanding our services to include this important function. Continuing to work collaboratively on these initiatives ultimately benefits us all.”

A few of the major highlights from HEALTHeLINK’s 2019 Report to the Community include:

  • HEALTHeLINK’s results delivery service, which enables practices and care coordination networks to receive their patients’ medical results directly into their EHRs from other linked sources, increased more than 14% over the last year.
  • More than 4.5 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 2019.
  • HEALTHeLINK continues to work on a population health system to support clinical transformation that combines claims and clinical data. HEALTHeLINK has completed the uploading of historical claims from HealthNow and is currently in the process of working with Independent Health and Univera on uploading their claims as well.
  • As part of the Interoperability and Innovation grant program, HEALTHeLINK was granted five more projects, which are now underway through the first quarter of 2020. These projects are focused on clinical interoperability on Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) to simplify and increase data exchange, provide patients with access to their own data within the HIE, and improve patient outcomes through predictive analytics.
  • HEALTHeLINK has also gone live with SHIEC’s patient-centered data home (PCDH) national network and is now able to send alerts to participating providers who have patients treated outside of New York State.

To view the 2019 HEALTHeLINK Report to the Community, please visit wnyhealthelink.com/2019.

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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.