Another icon of the paper age ”“ the medical chart ”“ is going the way of typewriters and spats.
Taconic Health Information Network and Community/Regional Health Information Organization (THINC-RHIO), established in 2005, has been developing ways to create the necessary infrastructure to make electronic patient records available to different health care providers without compromising the patient”™s privacy rights.
Members of THINC and state government conducted a symposium last week at Marist College in Poughkeepsie to chart where they have been with the initiative and where it is going.
THINC received a $5 million grant through New York State Department of Health”™s HEAL-NY (Health Efficiency Affordability Law) program in 2006. The nonprofit recently received an additional $1.9 million in September 2007 for a “Pay for Performance” grant to improve reporting quality.
The organization is hoping to receive additional funding during the next round of HEAL-NY grants, but when or if that may happen is undetermined at this time due to the recent shakeup in New York”™s executive branch.
Michael Duffy, chairman of the board of directors for the THINC-RHIO, said the group wants to be one of the first regional electronic health record databases, and eventually would like to see state and national models.
“We were amazed at how little IT was used to improve healthcare, so we set about doing something about it,” he said, explaining the genesis of THINC.
He said the area the group wants to cover is the entire lower Hudson Valley, otherwise defined by Duffy as Westchester through Ulster Counties.
Ideally, the health network will allow patient records to be accessed by every sector of the health care system, including community health centers, hospitals, pharmacies, labs and local physicians.
“There is currently no central place for patient info,” Duffy said.
He said the patient would be the only person to decide which physicians have access to the medical records, and that a premium would be placed on protecting that information.
“We”™re about a year away from having a functioning exchange,” he said.
Lori Evans, deputy commissioner for the New York state Department of Health Office of Health Information Technology Transformation, said her office is currently developing methods to see how this could be implemented statewide.
“We have been charged with realizing the goals of THINC,” she said.
Evans, whose office was created last year by the Health Department, said New York is currently spending $160 million on creating a statewide electronic health records exchange.
“That”™s a lot more than any other state is investing,” she said.
Nicholas Donofrio, the executive vice-president of innovation and technology for IBM, said utilizing information technology in this manner is not done enough in the United States.
“We”™re not even 10 percent penetrated in this country,” he said.
