A strong Return on Investment: Supporting regional healthcare delivery for our Veterans
By Jill Eisenstein, former CEO (2015 - 2021)
Measuring the ROI (Return on Investment) for community health information exchange (HIE) is tough. At Rochester RHIO, we continue to devote significant resources to demonstrating our value to the many corners of the healthcare sector. But it’s tricky. Savings to one participant group is likely a cost to another. And, the HIE is one of many community initiatives focused on improving the quality and efficiency of healthcare delivery.
But sometimes the value is obvious. The RHIO’s connectivity with the local Veterans Administrative (VA) services in Bath and Canandaigua has the potential to significantly improve care and system efficiency.
In our 13-county region, there are three VA hospitals, one large VA Outpatient Clinic and several smaller outpatient facilities. We have approximately 90,000* Vets living in our region, a significant portion of whom get some or all of their healthcare from community providers. With access to the RHIO’s clinical query portal, VA clinical providers will have instant access to information about their patient’s health care in non-VA settings, including access to:
- Lab and radiology results from the community, reducing duplicate testing.
- Discharge documentation and clinical reports from regional hospitals, allowing for appropriate follow-up care to reduce unnecessary rehospitalization.
- Continuity of Care Documents (C-CDAs), which list prescribed medications to help with safe medication management.
While this is a significant step toward improving care coordination, it is only our first step in providing better HIE services to support Veterans’ healthcare. Rochester RHIO will add bi-directional data exchange services via the eHealth Exchange in 2018, which adds the functionality for community clinician access to VA patient information.
We look forward to delivering real-time data to the VA and to supporting better healthcare for the Veterans in our regions in the weeks and months to come.
*Source: NYS Health Foundation