Healthconnect Headlines – May 6, 2019
Greater Houston Healthconnect, the regional HIE for Southeast Texas, has grown to one of the largest HIEs in the US, connecting health systems, physician practices, clinics and most anywhere healthcare is provided.
“Healthconnect locates and delivers patient health information to hundreds of hospitals and thousands of physician practices – better informing decisions made at the point of care”, says Nick Bonvino, CEO. With over 600,000 transactions per day, Healthconnect enables interoperability between caregiver’s disparate systems involving the quality, safety and efficiency of patient care. The result is wherever a patient goes, their health information follows them.
Promoting interoperability is a major focus for the health industry, with several proposed regulations released by CMS and the ONC. Healthconnect has positioned the region to thrive with these new requirements, ultimately aimed at improving care with a single on-ramp for national connectivity.
Job one is the proper identification of the patient, and the ability to uniquely find and match patients with all their encounters. Healthconnect has invested heavily in technology, people and processes to accomplish this necessary step prior to sharing information. This capability is essential to managing the health of populations.
Healthconnect’s hundreds of contracts representing thousands of locations where patients receive care, include the largest area Health Systems: HCA Houston Healthcare, Memorial Hermann, Houston Methodist, CHI St. Luke’s Texas Division, St. Joseph Medical Center, Harris Health, UTMB, CHRISTUS, MD Anderson and others. Participants also include large physician practices and clinics: UT Physicians, Baylor College of Medicine and Legacy Community Health as well as the many small practices and post-acute caregivers.
Moreover, Healthconnect uses its platform to deliver additional value-added services, such as: Diagnostic Image Exchange, ADT notifications, Health Services Research, Syndromic Surveillance and Public Health related services. “As Healthconnect continues to grow, we will leverage our base to innovate and expand services to our broad Participant community.” says Bonvino.
