Statewide Health Information Network of New York Selects MedAllies as "Direct Solution" Provider

NEW YORK, Sept. 19, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- The New York eHealth Collaborative (NYeC) has chosen MedAllies to operate the "Direct Solution" on the Statewide Health Information Network of New York (SHIN-NY). Similar to a highly secure email, Direct allows healthcare providers to seamlessly send data from one provider directly to another who is caring for the same patient.

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MedAllies Direct Solutions has been built according to specifications developed by the nationwide EHR/HIE Interoperability Workgroup, which NYeC formed last year and which consists of 14 states representing close to 50% of the population and 33 EHR and HIE vendors. NYeC created the group in the belief that merging efforts with other states would create economies of scale and provide the vendor community with a single, consistent set of interoperability specifications. The group developed those specifications earlier this year and will be setting up a compliance program to test and certify products.

For New York, what this means is that when products, like the Direct Solution, meet all of the EHR/HIE Interoperability Workgroup standards, they are "SHIN-NY ready" and will function "out-of-the-box" on the statewide network.

"Direct creates a round-trip referral, which is incredibly important to high-quality care. It sufficiently and effortlessly gets the patient and their information to the specialist physician and then gets the information back to the primary care physician, once the specialist has consulted on the patient," explains Ferdinand J. Venditti, Jr, MD, Vice Dean for Clinical Affairs at Albany Medical College. "This is the holy grail of consultative medicine. This is a home run."

The Direct Solution is one of three services that will be offered statewide via the SHIN-NY. The others are Patient Record Look-Up and Alerts. Direct operates like a highly secure email, whereas Patient Record Look-Up functions like a highly secure search engine, allowing only those healthcare providers a patient has consented for to access their health information. Alerts allows providers to subscribe to a function that alerts them when data is posted about their patients. For example, it would let a primary care provider know his or her patient has just been admitted to an emergency department.

"The New York Direct Network will lead the way for certified EHR interoperability across the nation, allowing provider-to-provider communication across care settings and eliminating the major cause of our fragmented and siloed healthcare system," said MedAllies CEO A. John Blair III, MD.

"Securing MedAllies as our partner for Direct is a huge step for the SHIN-NY. This is a core service that will benefit providers and their patients across the state," said David Whitlinger, Executive Director at NYeC. "Imagine the patient with a chronic condition, struggling to keep all of their care coordinated as they visit specialist after specialist. Direct can eliminate that struggle by connecting all of those caregivers in a single loop."

About The New York eHealth Collaborative (NYeC): NYeC is a not-for-profit organization, working to improve healthcare for all New Yorkers through health information technology (health IT).
Founded in 2006 by healthcare leaders, NYeC receives funding from state and federal grants to serve as the focal point for health IT in the State of New York. NYeC works to develop policies and standards, to assist healthcare providers in making the shift to electronic health records, and to coordinate the creation of a network to connect healthcare providers statewide. The goal of NYeC is that no patient, wherever they may need treatment within the State of New York, is ever without fast, secure, accurate, and accessible information. For more information visit nyehealth.org.

About the Statewide Health Information Network of New York (SHIN-NY): The SHIN-NY (pronounced "shiny") is coordinated by the New York eHealth Collaborative (NYeC) and functions similarly to a public utility, making electronic health records secure and accessible to healthcare providers statewide while improving patient care and lowering costs. SHIN-NY is a network of information transmitted between users. Like the internet, as more users connect, it grows, evolves, and becomes more secure, efficient, and easy to use. As an increasing number of private practices, nursing homes, clinics and hospitals begin to digitize their records, they have the option to connect to information hubs in their region of the state. These Regional Health Information Organizations collect health record data from the healthcare providers in their area and, with patient consent, allow this information to be shared securely with other providers in the region. The SHIN-NY will connect these regional hubs to create a private and secure network spanning the entire State of New York. 

About MedAllies
MedAllies, founded in 2001, has extensive experience with EHR implementations and workflow redesign to improve clinical care. It provides unmatched expertise in health information exchange and Direct services. It has provided Direct services since the Direct Project's inception and works with several pilot sites in New York State. MedAllies Direct Solutions builds on existing technology to achieve interoperability, with physicians using their current EHR systems, allowing information to flow across disparate EHR systems in a manner consistent with provider workflows. MedAllies Direct Solutions is a tool to advance primary care models that emphasize care coordination and improved care transitions and support patient-centered care.  

SOURCE New York eHealth Collaborative