The nonprofit New York State Health Foundation (NYSHealth) will award grants of up to $100,000 per organization to federally qualified health centers (FQHCs), multispecialty group practices, hospital-affiliated physician groups, independent physician practices, and other healthcare settings across New York State interested in implementing OpenNotes.
Established in 2010, OpenNotes creates partnerships toward better health and healthcare by giving everyone on the medical team, including the patient, access to the same information. Although more than 37 million Americans currently have access to their notes, uptake in New York State has been slow, which NYSHealth has sought to address by supporting 10 hospital systems to implement OpenNotes.
In 2017, NYSHealth issued a statewide Request for Proposals (RFP) to accelerate the spread of OpenNotes to more New York State hospitals and patients. To date, NYSHealth has supported 10 geographically dispersed hospital systems to implement OpenNotes. These hospital systems are also part of a New York State OpenNotes Collaborative, jointly sponsored by OpenNotes and NYSHealth.
The collaborative receives technical assistance from OpenNotes and meets quarterly to inform and learn from each other, highlight unique initiatives, and discuss potential barriers to and successful strategies for implementation. NYC Health + Hospitals implemented OpenNotes across all specialties (except behavioral health) at three hospitals in its network, with a fivefold increase in notes viewed. The University of Rochester Medical Center and Rochester Regional Health—the two biggest health systems in the area—have formed a partnership that brought OpenNotes to Rochester.
But the foundation notes that to ensure that all New Yorkers are able to have access to their own health information, OpenNotes must be spread to all settings in which patients receive care, especially in underserved communities.
Uptake of OpenNotes by FQHCs has been especially slow — only three FQHCs in California and one large FQHC network in Oregon have implemented OpenNotes. The need to spread OpenNotes to FQHCs and other healthcare settings, including multispecialty group practices, hospital-affiliated physician groups, and independent physician practices, is critical to making OpenNotes available to all New Yorkers.
Under this new RFP, NYSHealth said awardees would not only advance patient-centered care, but also help create the critical mass and momentum needed to catalyze additional participation that can spur culture change across the sectors—among both NYSHealth grantees and other organizations.
NYSHealth was established as a private foundation to receive the charitable funds resulting from the conversion of Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield from a nonprofit organization to a for-profit corporation. Since beginning operations in 2006, NYSHealth has made more than 950 grants totaling more than $140 million to more than 500 organizations to improve the health of all New Yorkers.
