Usage of Query-Based Health Information Exchange in Response to an Event Alert
According to a new report by the New York eHealth Collaborative (NYeC), more healthcare professionals are receiving patient care alerts and increasingly performing related patient record queries through the Statewide Health Information Network for New York (SHIN-NY).
Using data from HEALTHeLINK, Healthix, and Rochester RHIO—three of New York’s eight regional health information exchange networks connected by and comprising the SHIN-NY, the preliminary report looked at patient care alerts trends and their role in expanding the usage of an additional SHIN-NY service, patient record queries.
Researchers found that subscription alert services, where participating SHIN-NY providers receive real-time notifications when a patient is admitted to or discharged from a hospital or emergency department, increased by 95 percent from 2016 to 2017. At the same time, query-based exchanges prompted by alerts, where providers request patient records for more comprehensive information at the time they are needed, increased by 102 percent.
The report, funded by NYeC and prepared by researchers at Indiana University Richard Fairbanks School of Public Health and Weill Cornell Medical College, compared data from the second quarters of 2016 and 2017. It is a first-of-its-kind study surrounding the quantification of the relationship of alerts and query-based exchange. The study provides a baseline measurement to conduct additional research and gain a more comprehensive view of the value and role of alerts in providing clinicians with real-time information about their patients to support care coordination.