Healthcare Access San Antonio (HASA), a health information exchange (HIE) in San Antonio and 22 surrounding Texas counties, has announced that it is officially expanding to Dallas and merging with the North Texas Accountable Healthcare Partnership (NTAHP).
The North Texas Accountable Healthcare Partnership’s HIE service area includes 11 counties, 11,700 physicians, 137 hospitals and over 6.5 million people. Meanwhile, working with all of the major health systems in San Antonio and other healthcare providers, HASA has connected more than 1.6 million unique patients, its officials say. In May, it was reported that the two organizations were in talks to combine with plans to merge. Now official, with this merger there will currently be eight HIE organizations in Texas.
“This merger is a major milestone for Texas in that patients in need of emergency medical care may be hours away from home and still can have their medical history available,” Gijs Van Oort, HASA’s executive director, said in a statement. “With the Corpus Christi region already sharing patient information on the same platform, the expanded HIE will be able to connect patients and doctors at opposite ends of the I35 corridor where each day hundreds of thousands of people travel from one city to the other.”
Don Macaulay, HASA’s board chair, added, “The real-time exchange of medical information between providers throughout Texas is a key component to ensuring that patients receive timely and cost-efficient care. There is no doubt that lives will be saved by the sharing of real-time medical information from within this broader platform. This new expanded HIE will make it possible for doctors throughout Texas to securely access patient information from many different participating facilities in a matter of seconds."
