NY continues EHR adoption, boosts performance

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Continued EHR deployment and innovation continues in New York as investments into information exchange solutions grow. These efforts, supported by state organizations, have furthered the quality of health care across the state. However, facilities need to ensure they are optimizing their internal document management software as well with the appropriate paper conversion services.

According to EHR Intelligence, EHR and HIE adoption has increased steadily throughout the state since 2009 as patient report access has grown over 200 percent since implementations. These improvements have been supported by continued funding of the Western NY Beacon Program by the Office of the National Coordinator.

"New York State has made an unprecedented investment in our statewide infrastructure and collaborative governance efforts to enable widespread, interoperable health information exchange," said Shannon Kelley Kinnear, director of programs for the Division of Health IT Transformation, New York State Department of Health, according to the news source.  "Leveraging these existing connections between providers and RHIOs provides an additional return-on-investment by improving the quality, timeliness and efficiency of public health reporting and by facilitating provider access to public health data via their preferred workflow – electronic health records."

The WNY Beacon program is an opt-in option for patients across the state looking to help improve the quality of care by allowing their records to be shared across the medical community. This has helped improve the accuracy and speed of prescribing services, as well as reduce the overall cost of care. Additionally, disease management efforts have been enhanced, resulting in a 26 percent reduction in hospitalizations over the past 3 years.

All of these benefits have been touted as advantages that paperless efforts provide to the health care industry, and are important for the future of the medical community. However, investing in conversion services to move older records and other paperwork to a digital format is equally important and will help support the foundation of EHR growth. The right service will provide powerful support for future endeavors as well and meet operational needs over time, ensuring quality of care is up held from the administrative level.

Residents in NY have benefited greatly from the WNY Beacon program and EHR movement, and those in other states can as well by the right approach made by state officials and health care providers.

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