Rivals join hands for HIE

ATLANTA: Jersey Health Connect, the Northern and Central New Jersey Health Information Exchange, has chosen RelayHealth to provide secure health information exchange (HIE) technology to improve care coordination across competitive organizations, to provide eligible providers the tools they need to demonstrate meaningful use in pursuit of incentives, and to enhance care collaboration for the health of the patients and communities the health information exchange serves.

A press release adds that these participating organizations, many of which are traditionally competitors, collaboratively formed the health information exchange to enhance care coordination for improved patient care and to help member hospitals and physicians adopt technology solutions to qualify for incentives under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s (ARRA) HITECH provisions.

Six of the health information exchange’s participating organizations — Atlantic Health System, Solaris Health System, St. Barnabas Medical Center, Saint Peter’s Healthcare System, Summit Medical Group and Vista IPA — have already implemented the RelayHealth system and have been using it to support their enterprise health information exchange strategies. Currently, 1,925 physicians using disparate electronic health records (EHRs) are able to share clinical data that is aggregated and distributed through the RelayHealth platform for more than 1,000,000 patients.

“A key differentiator was RelayHealth’s ability to connect patients as seamlessly as they connect providers,” said Jacque Brodt-Suggs, communications chair, Jersey Health Connect. “Security and privacy are extremely important to the patient. RelayHealth’s ability to connect all stakeholders, and to do so securely, helped the group make their decision.”