Second Quarter, 2024

HealtheConnections, along with the other five regional health information organizations (RHIOs), representatives from the Gravity Project, and the New York eHealth Collaborative (NYeC), has been diligently preparing to support the activities of the Medicaid 1115 Waiver, New York Health Equity Reform (NYHER). As we await the announcement of the Social Care Networks (SCN) awards, we’re staying connected with our community-based organizations, providers of social care services, community clinicians, Managed Care Organizations (MCOs), and other community partners in anticipation of working together to achieve the aims of NYHER.

How We Will Support the 1115 Waiver NYHER:

• 1115 HRSN Screenings: HealtheConnections has implemented the necessary technology and procedures to receive and process Health Related Social Needs (HRSN) screenings from eventual SCNs and their partners. We have established a process to validate the screenings, convert them to the required format (FHIR, or Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources), and deliver them to the SHIN-NY Data Lake to be aggregated, as required by NYSDOH. This work is currently in the testing phase using synthetic data.
• Access to HRSN Screenings: Our team has implemented new functionality that will allow users of our myConnections portal the ability to query the SHIN-NY data lake and view HRSN screenings that have been completed for consented patients across NYS. This will enable access to this important information at the point of care by clinicians, care managers, and others in a familiar workflow.
• Data Enrichment: HealtheConnections is successfully sending certain clinical data to the SHIN-NY Data Lake so that it can be used to enhance the HRSN screenings, as well as to support approved public health use cases in the near future.
• Coming Soon: HealtheConnections will continue our collaboration with our SHIN-NY partners to test the collection, validation, and conversion of other HRSN data types, notably referrals, assessments, and service provision data. We will also be developing and launching a community outreach plan across our regional footprint in support of NYHER, along with establishing technical integrations with SCNs and other direct connections to facilitate the exchange of HRSN data.

We look forward to working closely with our partners as NYHER moves forward and welcome the opportunity to discuss plans, needs, and ideas along the way.

Our primary focus at HealtheConnections is to continually ensure the highest level of data quality in alignment with current interoperability best practices. Through our shift to a data-centric model, we will leverage our data assets into a single, standardized, curated data repository using Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standards, which will serve as the foundation to deliver current and future information services.

We are engaged in outreach efforts with our data sources aimed at gaining deeper insights into the data we receive. If you are a data source, please keep an eye out for messages from our team requesting your assistance. By taking this opportunity to re-validate all data feeds before migrating data to a new system, we can more effectively input, map, and store source data in our new FHIR environment.

The data mapping process is a significant step in ensuring the Data Centricity System is efficient, effective, and provides the most comprehensive view of a patient’s health. We will continue to share updates as we prepare for launch later this year.

Collaborations with Local Health Departments Results in Two New Public Health Reports

HealtheConnections is utilizing its data to help tackle the challenges public health departments face. We are developing reports that can be incorporated into the workflow of all local health departments in our area, aligning with our dedication to supporting public health initiatives. The most recent reports are prime examples.

The Orange County Health Department has partnered with HealtheConnections to develop a report that supports their efforts to combat the rising rate of maternal syphilis. This interactive report pulls together community-wide health information to identify recently pregnant women with syphilis. With daily updates to the report, the Orange County team can react more quickly and support more timely intervention for these patients.

Orange County recently highlighted this work in a presentation titled "Leveraging RHIO Data to Identify Syphilis During Pregnancy” on the national stage at the STI Engage 2024 conference earlier in June, and will do so again at NACCHO360 and PHI*con in Detroit in late July.

We are pleased to support Orange County’s success and continue to partner with other local health departments to address challenges using HIE data. If you’re a public health professional looking to start a conversation, reach out to support@healtheconnections.org.

HealtheConnections collaborated with two other New York State regional health information exchanges, Hixny and Healthix, and several local health departments to introduce a population-level report specifically for the local health departments. This report provides a comprehensive overview of emergency department visits by county. The report provides local health departments with the most up-to-date data on emergency department visits to help inform their public health strategies.

Since its launch, twelve local health departments within our footprint have already registered for access to the report. Our discussions leading up to the development of this new report were very productive and focused on potential improvements for future reports.

The county-specific reports include:

• The top ten reasons for visits to the emergency department
• Summary counts of the number of patients visiting the emergency department and the total number of emergency department visits
• Emergency department visits are provided by date, type of visit, diagnosis, demographics, and zip code, with filtering capabilities by each category

We are pleased to offer this report and look forward to opportunities to produce similar reports in the future that support our participants, which is in direct alignment with our mission and commitment to enabling improvements in health and healthcare delivery.

HealtheConnections announced that Elizabeth Amato will assume the role of President and CEO, succeeding Rob Hack, effective January 1, 2025. Earlier this year, Rob shared his intent to retire after nearly 15 years of leadership.

 “Elizabeth is the right person to steer HealtheConnections,” Rob said. “She has the requisite skills, experience, and knowledge of health information exchange that are key to sustain momentum and deliver value to our communities and stakeholders.”

458,900

image studies received

per month

15M

clinical alerts exchanged

per month

5.2M

clinical summary documents received

per month

562,500

unique patients accessed per month

549,000

results delivered

per month

Questions? Comments? Feedback? We want to hear from you! Simply reply to this email or send a message to info@healtheconnections.org.