Sharing data with behavioral healthcare providers has been a long-standing challenge for health information exchanges, but progress is being made. For example, HealtheConnections, an HIE based in Syracuse, N.Y., has partnered with Innovative Management Solutions (IMSNY), a joint venture between two of the largest behavioral health-focused independent practice associations (IPAs) in New York State.
Through this connection, these IPAs will receive hospital clinical event alerts for their entire patient population to improve transitions of care, care coordination, and contribute to better patient outcomes.
IMSNY was established by Coordinated Behavioral Care and Coordinated Behavioral Health Services in late 2019 to share resources, knowledge, and expertise to provide meaningful analytics and operational efficiency. Together, they represent 80 behavioral health agencies and 160,000 Medicaid lives.
This project is the first successful connection through IMSNY's Data Analytic Business Intelligence (DABI) Platform, which is powered by solutions vendor Arcadia. DABI collects information through these connections, organizes it, and clearly presents it for networks and agencies to make more informed decisions.
IMSNY says its core mission is to improve behavioral health delivery systems, representing large networks of social service organizations offering a continuum of community-based services including mental health, substance use treatment services, supportive housing, primary medical, recovery, support services, food, employment and housing. IMSNY is working on data collection and analysis via a central cloud-based data warehouse, which allows for more real-time and actionable data in order to improve outcomes and meaningfully engage in value-based contracting with payers.
"The HIE is uniquely positioned to bridge the informational gap between clinicians, hospitals and CBOs [community-based organizations]," said Rob Hack, president and CEO of HealtheConnections, in a statement. "Hospitalization notifications are critical for prompt patient care."
The nonprofit HealtheConnections covers the 26 counties of Central, Northern, Southern Tier, and Hudson Valley regions of New York. It serves 1,500 care organizations that represent 11,000 licensed clinicians, including behavioral health agencies and community-based organizations.
"Through data, we can develop a broader, clearer picture of the individual served and their multiple touch points within the healthcare ecosystem, which is critically important to our providers," said Jorge R. Petit, M.D., president and CEO of Coordinated Behavioral Care, in a statement. "Getting that data has historically been very difficult, let alone measuring and representing the impact the provider has on that individual."
IMSNY said it continues to expand upon the hospital admission, discharge, and transfer data coming through the HealtheConnections feeds, building more comprehensive data sets including, but not limited to, billing data and clinical information.
