February 11, 2021
The past year has had us head’s down bridging the clinical divide between the daily needs of healthcare organizations and leveraging data on 20 million patients in direct support of COVID19 testing and most recently, the vaccine rollout. Healthix, a large, public New York HIE, was enlisted in the early months of COVID19 to provide access to clinicians deployed in temporary hospitals, assist city health departments to locate hospitalized family members, and leverage our store of clinical records to support understanding of the spread and complexity of this pandemic for public health agencies. Our network, representing over 28,000 NYC clinicians and healthcare organizations, provides a vital system by connecting medical records in the service of patient care and coordination.
Today, we are less reactionary and more focused on tracking the increase of COVID19 test results throughout the city and providing insight by identifying high risk patients who would benefit most by receiving the vaccine. Lack of interoperability is not the main issue. Instead, we see how the abundance of data may overwhelm clinicians. Throughout this pandemic, Healthix has focused on creating targeted, real time alerts – tens of thousands on a monthly basis - to clinicians and public health departments. Now more than ever, cutting through the myriads of data to make it clinically actionable has become clear.
HIEs have and can play a pivotal role as the hub that serves the healthcare community, health plans, public health and consumers.
