Getting Organized: Best Practices

Spotlight on New York

One state in particular is making considerable progress in the march towards improving healthcare quality and safety through HIT and health information exchange. Public and private sector stakeholders alike are working together in New York to devise a coordinated, incremental strategy for utilizing information technology to support health and healthcare in the state.

Stakeholders Coming Together to Define Principles and Priorities

In October 2004, the United Hospital Fund (the Fund) engaged a broad range of health care leaders across the state to determine what steps could be taken to improve health care in New York through broader adoption of HIT and health information exchange.  This work, facilitated by the eHealth Initiative Foundation (eHI) with the support of the Health Policy and Strategy Group at Manatt, Phelps and Phillips LLC, helped stakeholders identify barriers to progress and define a set of principles and priorities for moving this work forward within the state.

Having established some broad areas of agreement through the first phase of the summit initiative, eHI and the Fund identified several concrete steps that will further define and advance the HIT policy agenda in New York. 

•  eHI is developing a draft HIT policy framework which defines how priorities to improve health and health care in New York will be addressed through broad HIT adoption.
•  The Fund is conducting additional research and consulting with the summit participants regarding options for establishing an ongoing statewide HIT leadership organization. 
•  eHI is developing a prototype for a NYS HIT policy website that could serve as a vehicle to support ongoing communication and coordination across communities in New York.
•  eHI is supporting the identification of specific strategies to estimate HIT value and business models to sustain HIT adoption and use, building on the New York State analysis conducted by the Center for Information Technology Leadership with support from the Fund, which indicates that the net benefit associated with “level four” interoperability within New York over ten years is $12.4 billion.

The State is Playing a Key Role

The New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) is also focusing on opportunities for HIT policy coordination.  The NYS HIT Working Group has been established as a vehicle to communicate and coordinate across a wide variety of state agency components – Medicaid, public health, professional licensure, technology procurement, and capital financing to name a few.  And several funding opportunities that directly or indirectly relate to HIT are in process:

•  HEAL-NY funds were approved in the state’s 2005 budget, and additional federal waiver funds may soon be available as well.
•  An RFP for disease management demonstration projects has been published, and the budget also established a new “pay for performance” demonstration program.
•  Additional funds were appropriated to support physician HIT adoption.

NYSDOH is developing a coordinated approach to guide both the general purposes and specific criteria relating to these funds.  They are also exploring opportunities to promote broad adoption of electronic prescribing as a means to improve quality and safety, while also maintaining the state’s stringent regulatory provisions relating to controlled substances. 

Regional HIT Collaborations are Spreading Across New York

The Greater New York Hospital Association (GNYHA) recently published a report which profiles 10 regional health information exchange projects, covering almost every region of the state – from New York City to Buffalo. A number of initiatives were highlighted, including the Taconic Health Information Network and Community which is focusing on physician electronic medical record adoption and the transmission of prescribing and performance measurement information through a web-based data exchange portal; the New York Clinical Information Exchange or NYCLIX, which is being organized by GNYHA to facilitate access to patient information at the point of care, in emergency rooms; the Queens Health Connection Card Program; and the Upstate New York Professional Healthcare Information and Education Demonstration Project (UNYPHIED).