HealtheLINK HIE Reports Uptick in Health Data Exchange in 2022

HEALTHeLINK, the health information exchange (HIE) for Western New York, worked on a total of 83 different projects focused on improving health data exchange in 2022 alone, according to the HEALTHeLINK 2022 Report to the Community.

“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,” Dan Porreca, HEALTHeLINK executive director, noted in a public statement.

“We are excited to take our collaboration with providers, hospitals, health plans, and the entire healthcare community a step further by building on our current offerings to support public health, population health, health equity, and quality improvement initiatives,” he added.

New HIE offerings include emergency department summary reports, which immediately generate specific queries for a predefined data set when a patient is registered at Erie County Medical Center’s emergency department.

The HIE also launched and expanded population health-related services to help create health plan efficiencies and provide custom metric reporting and community research support.

With support from the Milbank Memorial Fund, HEALTHeLINK conducted a study to examine if population health analytics helped 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 significantly better outcomes when practices use HEALTHeLINK’s population health management tool and CPC+ simultaneously, compared with instances in which only one or none of the programs are in place.

In addition to expanded offerings, HEALTHeLINK saw a 16 percent increase in the delivery of clinical results to providers compared to 2021.

Patient record lookup, which enables participating HIE providers to instantly access a consented patient’s health data and obtain information such as test results, medication history, etc., totaled more than 8.2 million.

HEALTHeLINK also continues to collaborate with HIE organizations across the state and country, like the Statewide Health Information Network for New York (SHIN-NY) and Civitas Networks for Health, to leverage and share best practices for improved care delivery.