Whittier IPA Selects Alere Accountable Care Solutions for Health Information Exchange

NEWBURYPORT, Mass., July 19, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Whittier Independent Practice Association (Whittier IPA), of Newburyport, Massachusetts, announced that it has signed an agreement with Alere Accountable Care Solutions to build a community-wide health information exchange (HIE).

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With Alere Accountable Care Solutions HIE, The Whittier IPA physicians now have state-of-the art tools for coordinating and managing care that puts them in the forefront of modern health care.  "Our vision is to create a fully integrated electronic network in which health information is confidentially exchanged between physicians, hospitals, home health care agencies, pharmacies, long term skilled nursing homes and rehabilitation centers as well as other health care providers to deliver coordinated care that provides the best service to patients in our community," said Kevin Lanphear, D.O. and President of Whittier IPA. 

Whittier IPA conducted an extensive review of the HIE market prior to selecting the Alere Accountable Care Solutions HIE.  "When our doctors saw the system in action, they immediately realized that they were looking at the future of medicine," says Joe Heyman, M.D., Founder of the Whittier IPA and current member of the Board of Directors.  "The fact that the system was capable of compiling patient histories from multiple electronic record systems and displaying them in a way that makes it easier for physicians to review patient care across all care givers will be a tremendous value when rendering care.  The added bonus is the system's ability to run seamlessly and elegantly on a small tablet and allows the technology to be incorporated into the physician's daily workflow.  It simply made the Alere HIE the only choice for us."

The Alere ACS Health Information Exchange solution combines multiple streams of data from disparate sources (such as laboratories, pharmacies, physician offices and hospitals), and harmonizes the data into a single semantically coherent patient record. It promotes a secure environment that enables healthcare providers to coordinate patient care, overcoming traditional geographic and technological barriers. Alere ACS's HIE will enable Whittier IPA's 200-plus multi-specialty physician organization to more effectively identify and care for high-risk patients across a broad population.

The Alere ACS HIE solution will also enable secure data-sharing across the continuum from patient to doctor to payer, delivering "one patient one record" for each consented patient in the community. "Many organizations are in the same position as Whittier IPA. They understand the logic of health information exchange, but need to find a solution that can be implemented, is easy to use, that they can afford, and that can grow with their needs," says Sumit Nagpal, CEO of Alere Accountable Care Solutions. "We are excited to be working with the pioneers in Newburyport to deliver exactly such a solution, and help them succeed in a world where reimbursement is increasingly tied to outcomes."

About Whittier Independent Physician Association, Inc.
Whittier IPA was established in 1984 as an organization to support local community physicians in contracting with managed care organizations and perform utilization and quality management review.  In 2005, the organization was selected as one of three pilots in the state of Massachusetts to establish the use of electronic medical records within physician practices through the Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative.  The organization currently has 202 primary care and specialist physicians that service Essex County, Massachusetts.

About Alere Accountable Care Solutions
Alere Accountable Care Solutions, a subsidiary of Alere Inc., delivers health information solutions that help provider organizations meet CMS Meaningful Use and Accountable Care requirements, achieve Triple Aim, and improve care coordination across the healthcare continuum. The Alere ACS portfolio of interoperable health information solutions has been the confident choice of doctors across the US. For more information, visit www.alereacs.com.

About Alere Inc.
By developing new capabilities in near-patient diagnosis, monitoring and health information technology, Alere enables individuals to take charge of improving their health and quality of life at home. Alere's global leading products and services, as well as its new product development efforts, focus on cardiology, infectious disease, toxicology and diabetes. Alere is headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts. For more information regarding Alere, please visit www.alere.com.

Todd Lowthers
Executive Director at Lower Merrimac Valley PHO, Whittier IPA
(978) 462-2345
[email protected]

SOURCE Whittier Independent Physician Association, Inc.