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HEALTHeLINK named Phase 2 winner in Health Resources & Services Administration Challenge

The Chautauqua Center reports significant increases in cancer screening rates as a result of implementing HEALTHeLINK solution BUFFALO, NY, April 5, 2023 – HEALTHeLINK, the health information exchange for Western New York, announced today it is a Phase 2 winner of the Building Bridges to Better Health: A Primary Health Care Challenge sponsored by the Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA). The goal of this multi-phase challenge is to enhance access and care coordination to achieve better health and reduce disparities utilizing technical assistance solutions. To advance health equity and specifically support Federally Qualified Health Centers, HEALTHeLINK built HEALTHeQUALITY, an innovative solution to help address gaps in care to improve the overall quality of care. HEALTHeLINK worked with The Chautauqua Center in Jamestown for Phase 2 of this challenge. “Collaborating with The Chautauqua Center illustrated how HEALTHeQUALITY reduces the burden of data collection for the practice,” said Drew McNichol, director of technology and security officer, HEALTHeLINK. “Instead of chasing down diagnostic and claims data, staff was able to use the time to focus on patient engagement to help identify gaps in care and reduce barriers, if needed, for various cancer screenings.” During the pilot phase, all eligible patients at The Chautauqua Center were queried for cancer screening gaps utilizing HEALTHeQUALITY. For all patients queried, a comment was added in their electronic health record noting if screening was completed or if patient needed to be contacted. These follow-ups were able to occur within days rather than months. As a result, The Chautauqua Center increased its breast cancer screenings by 19%, colorectal cancer screenings by 21%, and cervical cancer screenings by 23% when compared with screening rates from 2021. “Utilizing HEALTHeQUALITY has significantly streamlined data sharing for our staff,” said Mike Pease, CEO, The Chautauqua Center. “It has allowed us to be more efficient when it comes to care coordination, focusing follow-up efforts on our patients who hadn’t had requested clinical tests conducted. We are also now starting to see the benefit of sharing this information back to the provider, so they know all care loops are closed and adding a second layer of assuredness to follow up on any test results with their patients.” HEALTHeLINK announced last fall it had made it past Phase 1 of the challenge. From 27 Phase 1 finalists, HRSA selected HEALTHeLINK as one of 15 Phase 2 winners from across the country. Each winner was awarded $20,000 to help fund their project and move on to Phase 3 of the challenge, which recently launched. For Phase 3, HEALTHeLINK will be expanding upon HEALTHeQUALITY’s current functionality. The Building Bridges to Better Health: A Primary Health Care Challenge continues through July 2023. ### About HEALTHeLINK HEALTHeLINK serves as a resource for broad health system transformation through secure data-informed decision making for individual patient care and to support community investments with a purpose of improving health, health care, and collaboration with local health care providers and those who are connected via the Statewide Health Information Network for New York (SHIN-NY) to improve health outcomes and health care delivery, control costs, increase access to care, and improve health equity in Western New York. HEALTHeLINK is also a founding member of Civitas Networks for Health, a national collaborative working to use health information exchange to improve health. Providers and patients can visit wnyhealthelink.com or @HEALTHeLINK on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn for more information.

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HEALTHeLINK releases 2022 Report to the Community

BUFFALO, NY, February 1, 2023 - HEALTHeLINK, the health information exchange (HIE) for Western New York, is advancing its collaboration with the health care community to further expand the utilization of data to support strategies to improve health, increase access to care, and reduce health disparities. As highlighted in the HEALTHeLINK 2022 Report to the Community, this next step in the organization’s growth is the result of last year’s merging of Population Health Collaborative and the Regional Health Improvement mission into HEALTHeLINK. “Over the past 15 years, HEALTHeLINK has built the infrastructure to securely exchange clinical data and help participating providers with the information they need at the point of care,” said Dan Porreca, HEALTHeLINK executive director. “We are excited to take our collaboration with providers, hospitals, health plans, and the entire health care community a step further by building on our current offerings to support public health, population health, health equity, and quality improvement initiatives.” In addition to HEALTHeLINK’S work around addressing social determinants of health and improving health equity, a few of the major highlights from its 2022 Report to the Community include: With support from the Milbank Memorial Fund, HEALTHeLINK conducted a study to examine if population health analytics helped to improve care quality and efficiency in primary care practices enrolled in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ Comprehensive Primary Care Plus (CPC+) program. Results showed that when HEALTHeLINK’s population health management tool and CPC+ are in place at the same time, practices tend to have significantly better outcomes compared with instances in which only one or none of the programs are in place. Addition of new offerings to help drive efficiencies and improve overall quality of care, including Emergency Department Summary Reports, which immediately generate specific queries for a predefined set of data when a patient has been registered at Erie County Medical Center’s emergency department. Launch and expansion of new population health-related services to help create efficiencies for health plans, provide custom metric reporting, and community research support. More than 1.1 million clinical results, such as lab tests and radiology reports and images were delivered monthly. This marks a 16% increase over 2021. Patient record lookup which enables participating HEALTHeLINK providers to instantly access a consented patient’s clinical record and obtain information such as test results, medication history, etc. totaled more than 8.2 million. Finally, in 2022 alone, the HEALTHeLINK team worked on a total of 83 different projects focused on improving the HIE foundation and enhancing the services offered to its participants. HEALTHeLINK also continues to collaborate with similar organizations across the state and country, including the Statewide Health Information Network for New York (SHIN-NY) and Civitas Networks for Health, to leverage and share best practices for improved quality of care. To view the 2022 HEALTHeLINK Report to the Community, please visit wnyhealthelink.com/2022. ### About HEALTHeLINK HEALTHeLINK serves as a resource for broad health system transformation through secure data-informed decision making for individual patient care and to support community investments with a purpose of improving health, health care, and collaboration with local health care providers and those who are connected via the Statewide Health Information Network for New York (SHIN-NY) to improve health outcomes and health care delivery, control costs, increase access to care, and improve health equity in Western New York. HEALTHeLINK is also a founding member of Civitas Networks for Health, a national collaborative working to use health information exchange to improve health. Providers and patients can visit wnyhealthelink.com or @HEALTHeLINK on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn for more information.  

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HEALTHeLINK named Phase 1 winner in Health Resources & Services Administration Challenge

BUFFALO, NY, October 19, 2022 – HEALTHeLINK, the health information exchange for Western New York, announced today it is a Phase 1 winner of the Building Bridges to Better Health: A Primary Health Care Challenge sponsored by the Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA). The goal of this multi-phase challenge is to enhance access and care coordination to achieve better health and reduce disparities utilizing technical assistance solutions. There were more than 130 applicants from which HRSA selected HEALTHeLINK as one of 27 Phase 1 winners from across the country. Each winner was awarded $11,111 to help fund their project and move on to Phase 2 of the challenge. HEALTHeLINK’s project focuses on the design and development of its HEALTHeQUALITY technical assistance solution that supports Federally Qualified Health Centers to advance health equity. “Health center patients experience multiple barriers, such as environmental factors where they live and work, that may reduce access to health care and increase the risk of poor health outcomes,” said Drew McNichol, director of technology and security officer, HEALTHeLINK. “Through this project we are hoping to help health centers effectively improve patient outcomes with a technical solution to close clinical gaps in care and monitor social determinants of health, ultimately advancing health equity.” Phase 2 of the challenge recently launched and HEALTHeLINK will be putting HEALTHeQUALITY into production over the next several months to collect and measure the improvement of patient outcomes. The Building Bridges to Better Health: A Primary Health Care Challenge continues through August 2023. For additional details, visit https://www.challenge.gov/?challenge=building-bridges-to-better-health%3A-a-primary-health-care-challenge&tab=overview. ### 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 certified Qualified Entity and part 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 Civitas Networks for Health, a national collaborative working to use health information exchange to improve health. Providers and patients can visit wnyhealthelink.com or @HEALTHeLINK on both Facebook and Twitter for more information.  

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Guide 2 Better Care

Throughout the year, various local health care leaders provide education about HEALTHeLINK as well as highlight the value and benefits of clinical information exchange here in Western New York.

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