between Electronic Health Records and Health Information Exchanges –
 

New York, NY / NASHVILLE, TN – January 17, 2012 –ICA (www.icainformatics.com) announced today the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the New York eHealth Collaborative (NYeC) (www.nyehealth.org) to join a public-private multi-state working group comprised of Electronic Health Record (EHR) vendors, Health Information Exchange (HIE) vendors and states.  The group recognizes the value and need of having common standards, and is committed to develop the technical specifications to enable “plug and play” connectivity between EHRs and HIEs.

Originally led by New York, the expanded workgroup now includes federally designated counterparts in California, Colorado, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Oregon all representing approximately 30% of the U.S. population. The collaboration leverages existing published standards for interoperability from the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC).  HIE vendors working with the group are market leaders with significant market share nationally. The goal of this effort is to establish a single set of easily implementable standards that will enable connection and adoption of EHRs and HIEs.

Participants in the workgroup have agreed to develop strategies, requirements, standards and certification criteria to connect EHRs to HIEs to enable the broad adoption of health information among providers. The goal will be the fully operational connection between EHRs and state, regional and integrated delivery network (IDN) HIEs. Other participating vendors include Allscripts, Axolotl, eClinicalWorks, e-MDs, Greenway Medical Technologies, Intersystems, McKesson Physician Practice Solutions, Medicity, NextGen Healthcare, Sage Healthcare Division, and Siemens Healthcare.

“This collaboration is a crucial step towards solving interoperability problems, and we are very happy to have ICA on board,” said David Whitlinger, Executive Director of NYeC. “Collectively, this group is now looking forward to widespread adoption and market preference for the products that employ the specifications it has created and will create.”

“ICA is excited and honored to be participating in this national collaborative workgroup,” said Gary Zegiestowsky, chief executive officer of ICA. “ICA’s growth in the last several years has solidified our reputation as a national player in the HIE market and we can now bring to bear the experience we’ve gained to help make a palpable difference in expanding the use of EHRs through exchanging health information.  ICA’s role will be significant and include active participation in all meetings and decision making as they regard to standards development, working collaboratively with all workgroup members and participating in all interoperability testing, among other activities.”

 About The New York eHealth Collaborative (NYeC)
The New York eHealth Collaborative (NYeC) is a not-for-profit organization, working to improve healthcare for all New Yorkers through health information technology (health IT). Founded in 2006 by healthcare leaders, NYeC receives funding from state and federal grants to serve as the focal point for health IT in the State of New York. NYeC works to develop policies and standards, to assist healthcare providers in making the shift to electronic health records, and to coordinate the creation of a network to connect healthcare providers statewide. The goal of NYeC is that no patient, wherever they may need treatment within the State of New York, is ever without fast, secure, accurate, and accessible information. Visit www.nyehealth.org.

About ICA
ICA was established to take innovative technology developed by Vanderbilt Medical Center to the broader healthcare market, and now delivers a comprehensive HIE solution to hospitals, IDNs, communities and states. Unmatched in its ability to yield cost efficiency, improved patient care, and better outcomes, ICA’s CareAlign® care management solution captures complete data to enhance the decision-making process. The CareAlign clinical intelligence engine empowers HIEs to leverage existing core systems and construct a longitudinal patient record.  CareAlign also features provider/patient portals, secure clinical communication, NHIN compliant interoperability, EHR-lite and population management tools.  Visit www.icainformatics.com; follow us on Twitter: @icainformatics; and Facebook.

NEPTUNE, NJ / NASHVILLE, TN – December 8, 2011 – ICA (www.icainformatics.com) and Meridian Health (www.meridianhealth.com) announced that Meridian has upgraded to CareAlign® 3.0 to take advantage of a set of more robust features and to enable the flow of continuity of care documents (CCD) both in and out of the health information exchange (HIE). This new release offers numerous benefits and strengths designed to deliver a smoother exchange of clinical information between clinicians, patients and hospitals in this multi-county regional HIE that serves over 250,000 people in Monmouth and Ocean counties, and includes 12,000 staff, 2,100 physicians, six hospitals with over 1,700 beds, five post-acute care facilities, 12 ambulatory care facilities, 18 physician practices, six occupational health centers, nine rehabilitation facilities and seven behavioral health facilities.

Margaret Quinn, M.D., chief medical information officer at Meridian Health, said, “CareAlign 3.0 sophisticated and powerful programming helps Meridian Health move closer to its goal of being able to share clinical data with all our physicians, hospitals, clinics and ambulatory units.  CareAlign fits our patient-centric approach to delivering HIE to our regional facilities, improves our ability to integrate with our multiple systems across our facilities and geographies, and streamlines our ability to access, review, analyze and distribute patient data, both on an individual basis and in the aggregate.”

“Since going live with CareAlign last spring, Meridian Health has made great strides in connecting its hospitals and physicians enabling patient data to be sent, retrieved and analyzed across a densely populated two-county region,” said Rebecca Weber, chief information officer of Meridian Health. “The many improvements of CareAlign 3.0 will further add to our capability and efficiency by allowing physician electronic medical records (EMR) to send CCDs bi-directionally throughout the system.” she added.

“Of particular value to Meridian at this point in our implementation is an expanded capability that enables the sending and receiving of CCDs,” added Bob Radvanski, director of information technology at Meridian.  “This feature will allow Meridian physicians to gain more complete and meaningful use of their EMRs through access to this universally recognized medical records document.”

ICA Chief Executive Officer, Gary Zegiestowsky, added, “This update to CareAlign gives our clients more features and more power to accomplish their goals with HIE. In addition to CCD transfer, significant improvements in the screen display for lab results, medications and diagnoses can now be viewed simultaneously through the Clinical and Patient Portals. Additional support for flow sheet configuration, a built-in audit trail, more robust visit summaries, improved clinical communications, as well as a cleaner, clearer patient demographics display is now part of the CareAlign upgrade. Overall, 3.0 strengthens and streamlines CareAlign’s already robust features while adding valuable new ones. All of these features enhance the solution’s ability to improve care and reduce costs.”

Meridian Health is one of New Jersey’s most comprehensive not-for-profit healthcare providers offering a wide-range of healthcare services, including home care and hospice, skilled nursing and sub-acute care facilities, physician practices, rehabilitation and fitness centers, occupational health, home medical equipment and in-home safety technology, ambulance and medical transportation, as well as outpatient laboratory, imaging, and surgery centers. Meridian has six primary hospital locations: Jersey Shore University Medical Center and K. Hovnanian Children’s Hospital in Neptune, Ocean Medical Center in Brick, Riverview Medical Center in Red Bank, Southern Ocean Medical Center in Manahawkin and Bayshore Community Hospital in Holmdel.

About Meridian Health
Meridian Health is a leading not-for-profit healthcare organization in New Jersey, comprising Jersey Shore University Medical Center and K. Hovnanian Children’s Hospital in Neptune, Ocean Medical Center in Brick, Riverview Medical Center in Red Bank, Southern Ocean Medical Center in Manahawkin, Bayshore Community Hospital in Holmdel, and Meridian Partner Companies that include home health services, skilled nursing and rehabilitation centers, ambulatory care, ambulance services, and outpatient centers. Meridian Health has consistently been rated among the top performing health systems in New Jersey for clinical quality, is one of the FORTUNE “100 Best Companies to Work For”, and is the recipient of numerous state and national recognitions for patient care and nursing excellence, including the distinction of being the first health system in the country to receive Magnet designation for nursing. Most recently, Meridian was named one of the Top 100 Integrated Health System in the country. For more information, visit www.meridianhealth.com

About ICA
ICA was established to take innovative technology developed by Vanderbilt Medical Center to the broader healthcare market and now delivers a comprehensive HIE solution to hospitals, IDNs, communities and states. Unmatched in its ability to yield  cost effectiveness, improved patient care, and better outcomes, ICA’s CareAlign care management solution captures complete data to enhance the decision making process.  ICA’s CareAlign intelligence engine empowers HIEs to leverage existing core systems to construct a longitudinal patient record.  CareAlign also features provider/patient portals, secure clinical communication, NHIN compliant interoperability, EHR-lite and population management tools.  Visit www.icainformatics.com; follow us on Twitter: www.Twitter.com/icainformatics; and Facebook: www.facebook.com

NASHVILLE, TN – December 8, 2011 – ICA (www.icainformatics.com), a leading provider of interoperability technology that enables health information exchange (HIE), announced that it will be participating in the Direct Project’s December 2011 Virtual Connect-A-Thon, the goal of which is to test interoperability between and among other partner Health Information Service Providers (HISP) in order to ensure the smooth and accurate flow of clinical data between different information systems.

“Interoperability is becoming increasingly necessary as the transfer and sharing of electronic clinical data between patients, clinicians, hospitals and communities becomes more ubiquitous.” said Aaron Stranahan, Director of Enterprise Services, ICA. “This Virtual Connect-A-Thon will help ensure that vendors maintain HISPs that are compatible with each other through current standards and are driving to meet the guidelines and mandates of The Direct Project.”

The goal of this Connect-A-Thon is to test recent changes to reference implementation, test within existing implementations, test overall HISP interoperability and to prepare for the next reference implementations as they move toward being production ready. The format of the Virtual Connect-A-Thon will be informal with a limited agenda designed to enable technology testing to occur in an open environment.

 About The Direct Project
The Direct Project is the set of standards, policies and services that enable simple, secure transport of health information between authorized care providers. The Direct Project enables standards-based health information exchange in support of core Stage 1 Meaningful Use measures, including communication of summary care records, referrals, discharge summaries and other clinical documents in support of continuity of care and medication reconciliation, and communication of laboratory results to providers.

About ICA
Informatics Corporation of America (ICA) was established to take innovative technology developed by Vanderbilt Medical Center to the broader healthcare market and now delivers a comprehensive HIE solution to hospitals, IDNs, communities and states. Unmatched in its ability to yield  cost effectiveness, improved patient care, and better outcomes, ICA’s CareAlign care management solution captures complete data to enhance the decision making process.  ICA’s CareAlign intelligence engine empowers HIEs to leverage existing core systems to construct a longitudinal patient record.  CareAlign also features provider/patient portals, secure clinical communication, NHIN compliant interoperability, EHR-lite and population management tools.  Visit www.icainformatics.com; follow us on Twitter: www.Twitter.com/icainformatics; and Facebook: www.facebook.com

“KHIN’s original goal for physician participation was just 400 by the end of 2011,” said Laura McCrary Ed.D., Executive Director KHIN. “This momentum far exceeds our wildest dreams and speaks to the ease with which the solution is implemented and the nominal financial impact to these participants.  KHIN is tying together hospitals, physicians and patients to improve care and reduce costs through effective, secure and auditable clinical communication.”

KHIN is a statewide HIE initiative that includes both densely populated urban as well as rural areas in Kansas. The CareAlign platform serves all of Kansas including 160 hospitals and over 7500 physicians.  It also includes the Kansas Medical Society, Kansas Hospital Association, and the Wichita Health Information Exchange, making this effort one of the largest in the U.S. Also included in the exchange is KSWebIZ, the Kansas Immunization Registry, which is a web-based centralized birth-to-death database that maintains complete, accurate and secure immunization records for all Kansas residents.

Dr. McCrary continued, “The secure clinical communications offered by CareConnect has been one of the key drivers of provider enthusiasm for the KHIN exchange. As physicians join us, we hear again and again how this communications component is one of the features they regard as the easiest and most beneficial to the rapid deployment, sharing and use of clinical information resulting in improved patient care and reduced administrative costs.”

“The original clinical communications pilot included a small group of physicians and other eligible providers who worked with KHIN and ICA project management teams to pilot the secure clinical communications process,” said Gary Zegiestowsky, chief executive officer at ICA.  “The success of this small working group ultimately led to the ballooning success we see today.  Rapid deployment of the initial communications platform enabled physicians to meet Meaningful Use requirements quickly which in turn gained the confidence of other providers in the state and created the stampede to join what is rapidly becoming one of the most successful HIEs in the country.”

About The Kansas Health Information Network (KHIN)
KHIN’s mission is to improve health care quality, coordination and efficiency through the exchange of health information at the point of care utilizing a secure electronic network provided by a collaboration of health care organizations.   KHIN is a provider led 501(c)3.  It draws users from a broad geographical area and aligns with state data sources to support cost effective delivery of services. It supports and integrates with community and medical trading area efforts to drive care coordination and workflow changes creating a climate to encourage innovation. Its goals are to ensure providers, patients and communities have long-term access to cost effective, sustainable health information exchange aligned with costs distributed across a broad user base. It also encourages and removes barriers so communities and regions can focus on quality improvement, patient centered medical home and entrepreneurial strategies that effect local health outcomes. Visit www.khinonline.org.

About Informatics Corporation of America (ICA)
Informatics Corporation of America (ICA) was established to take innovative technology developed by Vanderbilt Medical Center to the broader healthcare market, and now delivers a comprehensive care management and HIE solution to hospitals, IDNs, communities and states. Unmatched in its ability to yield cost efficiency, improved patient care, and better outcomes, ICA’s CareAlign solution captures complete data to enhance the decision-making process. The CareAlign clinical intelligence engine empowers HIEs to leverage existing core systems and construct a longitudinal patient record.  CareAlign also features provider/patient portals, secure clinical communication, NHIN compliant interoperability, EHR-lite and population management tools.  Visit www.icainformatics.com; follow us on Twitter: www.Twitter.com/ icainformatics; and Facebook: www.facebook.com

TOPEKA, KS / NASHVILLE, TN – October 25, 2011 – ICA (www.icainformatics.com) announced today that Kansas Health Information Network (KHIN) (www.khinonline.org) and eHealthAlign (www.ehealthalign.org) have been working together for the last six months to bring their two ICA Health Information Exchange (HIE) technology contracts together.

KHIN will manage the contract and work directly with ICA. The merger will allow one standardized approach across Kansas and western Missouri for management of the health information exchange technology infrastructure. The merging of the two contracts will ensure that all efficiencies of scale related to the help desk, project management, training team, education and outreach, analytics and interface costs to state level services are not duplicated. This arrangement will result in significant cost savings for providers. The KHIN HIE Collaborative includes Kansas Medical Society, Kansas Hospital Association, eHealthAlign and the Wichita Health Information Exchange. The Collaborative will draw upon CareAlign’s powerful clinical informatics engine to improve patient care coordination and quality while ensuring patient privacy.

Laura McCrary Ed.D, Executive Director of KHIN, said, “The Kansas Health Information Network is focused upon five projects that span the entire state of Kansas and western Missouri. The five projects include the development of exchange capability in Wichita, Kansas City and the rural portions of Kansas (RHIN), the implementation of secure clinical messaging for eligible providers and the development of an interface to the Kansas Immunization Registry, or KSWebIZ.”  KSWebIZ is a web-based centralized birth to death database that maintains complete, accurate and secure immunization records for all Kansas residents.

Dr. McCrary continued, “Full exchange functionality is in process for Wichita, Kansas City and the RHIN. In Wichita the Virtual Private Network (VPN) has been built for the testing of data with Via Christi, the largest hospital in the state.  In Kansas City, work has begun with The University of Kansas and their EHR vendor, Epic, to build the VPN and test the data. In the rural portions of the state, eleven hospitals have signed participation agreements and business associate agreements with KHIN. VPNs are currently being built for Hays Medical Center and Pratt Regional Medical Center. Additional RHIN participants include Hutchinson Clinic and the Community Health Center of Southeast Kansas. Both of these practices have multiple locations throughout the state. Technical discovery has started with the Great Plains Health Alliance and their 29 hospitals and associated clinics.”

Gary Zegiestowsky, Chief Executive Officer at ICA, noted, “The merger of KHIN and eHealthAlign is a practical, cost-saving move that will further the HIE goals of this broad region covering both densely populated and rural areas in eastern Kansas and western Missouri. The CareAlign platform will serve all of Kansas including the Kansas City region which has over 36 hospitals, 3,000 primary care physicians, in 13 counties in Kansas and 12 counties in Missouri. CareAlign’s robust, multi-featured HIE includes EHR-Lite capabilities to meet the needs of physician practices currently without EMRs, an intuitive clinical and patient portal functionality, as well as secure clinical communications all to promote adoption of information sharing among clinical personnel and the patients they serve.”

 Secure Clinical Messaging
A group of 34 physicians and other eligible providers worked with the KHIN and ICA project management teams to pilot the secure clinical messaging process that allows eligible providers to exchange clinical information with other health care providers. Inception to rollout took only six weeks of deployment time enabling physicians to meet the Meaningful Use core measure of exchanging healthcare data with an unaffiliated provider. The group attended online training and gained access to the KHIN secure clinical messaging site to create a message.  All participants in the pilot group will utilize their EHR to create a Continuity of Care Document (CCD) and then attach it to a KHIN secure message. The physician is then able to send the message with patient health information securely to another provider.

The pilot group will provide feedback to KHIN and ICA project management teams. In September through December 2011 all other providers will receive instructions and the necessary protocols to securely message another provider and qualify for incentive payments. To date, approximately 400 Kansas physicians and eligible providers are expected to securely exchange information in 2011 using the KHIN platform.

For more information on the merger between KHIN and eHealthAlign, click on this link which will connect you to the July-August 2011 KHIN Newsletter. http://khinonline.org/news/july-august-2011.

About The Kansas Health Information Network (KHIN)
KHIN’s mission is to operate and maintain a health information exchange technology services organization.   It draws users from a broad geographical area that encompasses a multi-state region and aligns with state designated health information exchanges to support cost effective delivery of services. It supports and integrates with community health information exchanges to drive care coordination and workflow changes creating a climate to encourage innovation. Its goals are to ensure providers, patients and communities have long-term access to cost effective, sustainable health information exchange aligned with costs distributed across a broad user base. It also encourages and removes barriers so community exchanges can focus on innovation and entrepreneurial strategies that effect local health outcomes.

About Informatics Corporation of America (ICA)
Informatics Corporation of America (ICA) was established to take innovative technology developed by Vanderbilt Medical Center to the broader healthcare market, and now delivers a comprehensive HIE solution to hospitals, IDNs, communities and states. Unmatched in its ability to yield cost efficiency, improved patient care, and better outcomes, ICA’s CareAlign solution captures complete data to enhance the decision-making process. The CareAlign clinical intelligence engine empowers HIEs to leverage existing core systems and construct a longitudinal patient record.  CareAlign also features provider/patient portals, secure clinical communication, NHIN compliant interoperability, EHR-lite and population management tools.  Visit www.icainformatics.com; follow us on Twitter: www.Twitter.com/ icainformatics; and Facebook: www.facebook.com

The theme of Mr. Tempesco’s presentation was that, while numerous forms of organizational structures have attempted to create value from health data exchange, including Community Health Information Organizations (CHIN) and Regional Health Information Organizations (RHIO), ACOs may in fact be the model that will finally cause the financial need for clinical data exchange that has eluded healthcare delivery for decades. The key to its success, however, will be patient centered HIE technology that enables true communication at critical hand offs, collaboration across the continuum of care and analytics to determine best practices to reduce costs while improving quality.

Mr. Tempesco asserts that healthcare has been decisively moving away from a transaction-based care model based on activity, to a value-based care model based on outcomes. This transformation shows an increasing recognition of quality as one of the key criteria of healthcare and represents a fundamental shift in values. The transition has been occurring over decades, but has gained momentum in the past few years as advances in technology increasingly enable the standard exchange of clinical data. Secure, standards-based data exchange will ensure the care coordination often lacking in most healthcare facilities. Shifting the payment paradigm to a provider-centric risk assumption model may ironically result in “empty hospital beds” being the key to enhanced revenue for these organizations.

This quality-driven care model requires a broad and expanded computational capability that works across all care settings and is able to deliver patient information to these multiple settings at the point-of-care in a way that changes practice patterns. One of the key differences in the current approach to health information technology is that prior attempts had stopped at “automating”, leaving the “exchange” and distribution of the clinical information out of the picture.  Other industries have led the way in not only automating, but coordinating information in order to make their business models more efficient and improve quality. Healthcare is now in the process of both automating and then using the resultant information to rapidly improve efficiency, effectiveness and quality for care.

“The missing link to care coordination through automation has been a combination of both data portability and patient centric approaches to exchanging information in the healthcare sector,” said Mr. Tempesco. “HIE provides the portability of patient records and the ability to put the patient at the center of the healthcare process. Patient portability enables patient information to be transferred securely; patient centricity requires that available patient data is aggregated and accessible in real-time and that providers can collaborate on a patient’s course of treatment. The patient centric approach is the ultimate goal of HIE because it is the only solution that offers comprehensive care coordination for patients.”

“Mr. Tempesco gave an engaging talk to one of the largest audiences we have had at a forum of this kind. His personable approach brought the key concepts of HIE back to a human level through anecdote and example and provided a lively and down-to-earth presentation that the audience responded to very well,” said Craig Schneider, Director of Healthcare Policy at the Massachusetts Health Data Consortium.

ICA has numerous clients across the United States where this complete coordination is occurring, including Vanguard Health System’s three hospitals in Massachusetts: MetroWest Medical Center in Natick and Framingham and Saint Vincent Hospital in Worcester. Other key clients include the Kansas Health Information Network which covers most of the state of Kansas and parts of Missouri, and MidSouth eHealth Alliance and Middle Tennessee eHealth Connect which cover the major metropolitan areas of Memphis and Nashville, TN, respectively.

About ICA
ICA was formed to take innovative technology developed by practicing clinicians and informatics professionals at Vanderbilt Medical Center to the broader health care market. ICA provides a comprehensive HIE solution to hospitals, IDNs, communities and states, including: a comprehensive clinical information engine; portal and communications platform; interoperability capabilities; EHR-Lite; disease management and analytics and reporting tools. ICA empowers caregivers to make informed decisions at the point of care with its standards-based interoperability to help health care enterprises achieve operational efficiencies across multiple providers and settings. Visit www.icainformatics.com.

About The Massachusetts Health Data Consortium
The Massachusetts Health Data Consortium is a non-profit organization with about 150 healthcare organization members.  The Consortium’s mission is to:  (1) be a neutral convener of healthcare stakeholders to promote collaboration relating to healthcare information technology, health data, and health information exchange; (2) be a trusted, neutral holder and disseminator of health data; and (3) to promote the growth of health information exchange by addressing technical, financial, policy, and operational barriers that slow the adoption of HIE.

Gail Amundson, MD, president and CEO of Quality Quest for Health of Illinois, the organization that incubated CIHIE, said, “We are excited to have finalized our agreement with ICA and found the necessary participant support within our community to begin implementing our AllCharts™ software using the CareAlign® platform. CareAlign will enable CIHIE to provide a densely populated region in the middle of the state with the tools to improve quality of care while protecting privacy, sharing costs among stakeholders and minimizing barriers to provider participation. ICA’s broad experience in governance, committee formation and policy and procedure will assist us in getting off to a fast start and a focused implementation process. Combining the aggregated patient clinical data from our hospitals with secure clinical messaging across the continuum of care will enable better care coordination and collaboration between hospitals, providers and patients across our communities.”

Joy Duling, Interim Executive Director of CIHIE, further explained, “ICA’s Project Initiation Workflow methodology will help us develop use cases and identify measurable goals. CareAlign will provide us with core technology tools to achieve transformative changes to healthcare in the region such as primary care medical home and informed care coordination teams. We also see the solution improving transitions of care from hospitals to the ambulatory setting, from emergency departments to follow-up care and supporting the transfer of trauma patients to trauma centers.”

John Tempesco, Chief Marketing Officer of ICA, added, “CareAlign’s ability to easily scale to large populations will ensure AllCharts ability to strengthen care coordination among its numerous hospitals, clinics and other health facilities and institute a more collaborative approach to care delivery. AllCharts goal of improving treatment decisions, avoiding redundant diagnostics and eliminating adverse drug reactions will result in cost reductions while patient care outcomes improve.”

The CIHIE service area currently covers a population of approximately 1.3 million people and includes 27 hospitals, 20 health departments, 2,800 physicians, 280 pharmacies, 12 labs and imaging centers and numerous ancillary healthcare providers such as rehabilitation centers, behavioral healthcare, long-term facilities and nursing homes. The current Charter Members of CIHIE are Advocate BroMenn Medical Center in Normal, Decatur Memorial Hospital, Easter Seals, Heartland Community Health Clinic, the Human Service Center – a subsidiary of Fayette Companies, Methodist Medical Center of Illinois, Proctor Hospital, OSF Saint Francis Medical Center, St. Mary’s Hospital in Streator, St. Mary’s Hospital in Decatur, and the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria.

About Central Illinois Health Information Exchange (CIHIE)
Central Illinois Health Information Exchange is an independent 501(c)(3) non-profit organization which governs the regional HIE.

About Quality Quest for Health of Illinois
Quality Quest for Health of Illinois is a non-profit healthcare collaborative working to transform healthcare in the state.

 About Informatics Corporation of America (ICA)
ICA was established to take innovative technology developed by Vanderbilt Medical Center to the broader healthcare market and now delivers a comprehensive HIE solution to hospitals, IDNs, communities and states. Unmatched in its ability to yield  cost effectiveness, improved patient care, and better outcomes, ICA’s CareAlign solution captures complete data to enhance the decision making process. ICA’s CareAlign intelligence engine empowers HIEs to leverage existing core systems to construct a longitudinal patient record. CareAlign also features provider/patient portals, secure clinical communication, NHIN compliant interoperability, EHR-lite and population management tools. Visit www.icainformatics.com; follow us on Twitter: www.Twitter.com/icainformatics; and Facebook: www.facebook.com.

MSeHA is a non-profit initiative whose mission is to improve the quality, safety and efficiency of healthcare in the Mid-South region. By providing for the electronic exchange of health information, healthcare providers can securely access patients’ vital health information when and where it is needed. MSeHA was established in 2004 as a result of grants from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the State of Tennessee, and is one of the oldest continuously operating HIEs in the country.

“MSeHA is expanding use of ICA’s CareAlign platform in a way that offers care providers easy access to pertinent and critical clinical information while supporting patient safety, quality and the financial objectives of MSeHA. Prior to the initial implementation of our HIE solution, our participating hospital emergency departments and clinics were providing care in the absence of patient history and knowledge of chronic conditions and current medications. This situation created an environment where diagnostic tests were being duplicated, unnecessary treatments were being ordered, and costs to clinics and hospitals were increasing, as were administrative tasks and costs. CareAlign has helped dramatically remedy that situation,” said Rodney Holmes, Executive Director of MSeHA. “With additional care team and workflow enhancements at our participants’ facilities, we hope to further our ability to assist in better coordination of care for patients and facilitate adoption by a wider range of providers within the community.”

“Having an aggregated longitudinal medical record in the acute care, emergency department and ambulatory settings is essential for both quality improvement and cost reduction,” said Dr. Reginald Coopwood, Chairman of the MSeHA Board and CEO of the Regional Medical Center at Memphis. “Implementation of the enhanced services of the CareAlign 1.0 platform only increases our ability to succeed within our current participants and expand our offering to more patient care settings across the Memphis area and beyond. It also positions us well for communicating effectively with the state HIE initiative and other HIEs across the region.”

ICA Chief Marketing Officer, John Tempesco, agrees that MSeHA’s objective to have clinical information immediately available and embedded in the physician’s workflow has been met. “MSeHA continues to be a leader in healthcare technology to improve the quality of care it delivers through care coordination, communication and collaboration within the Memphis region,”  he said, adding, “Ultimately these three ‘Cs’ of healthcare delivery will lead to increased quality of care at reduced costs.”

About the MidSouth eHealth Alliance (MSeHA)

The MidSouth eHealth Alliance was established in 2004 with $12 million in combined grants from the Agency for Health care Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the State of Tennessee. It is a community-wide health information exchange in the greater Memphis, Tennessee area allowing providers to share patient information from inpatient, outpatient and emergency room treatments across multiple clinical facilities, including emergency departments, inpatient facilities, and ambulatory clinics. Visit MSeHA at www.midsoutheha.org.

About ICA

ICA was established to take innovative technology developed by Vanderbilt Medical Center to the broader healthcare market and now delivers a comprehensive HIE solution to hospitals, IDNs, communities and states. Unmatched in its ability to yield  cost effectiveness, improved patient care, and better outcomes, ICA’s CareAlign solution captures complete data to enhance the decision making process.  ICA’s CareAlign intelligence engine empowers HIEs to leverage existing core systems to construct a longitudinal patient record.  CareAlign also features provider/patient portals, secure clinical communication, NHIN compliant interoperability, EHR-lite and population management tools.  Visit www.icainformatics.com; follow us on Twitter: www.Twitter.com/icainformatics; and Facebook: www.facebook.com

Panel discussions addressed organizational competencies and the building blocks of utilizing HIT and HIE in improving hospital and IDN care coordination, developing a strategic infrastructure that leverages effective health information exchange and how to implement a successful HIE methodology. Breakout sessions included members from every sector of healthcare – federal and state governments, insurers and hospital systems. These sessions became workshops that tackled real-world issues facing integrated delivery networks (IDNs) across the New York metropolitan area. The problems discussed included 1) reducing re-admission rates; 2) reducing costs of patients with chronic disease, 3) improving the management of non-emergent patients, and in general preparing IDNs for becoming accountable care organizations. Audience participants included chief medical officers, chief
medical information officers, chief information officers, chief nursing officers and chief financial officers, all of whom are decision makers in the health information exchange process.

John Tempesco noted, “This symposium was extremely valuable in laying out real-world solutions for institutions, such as IDNs, to implement HIEs that will improve the transfer of real-time clinical patient information throughout the integrated delivery network. Clinical staff who have live data in front of them will be less likely to recommend or deliver inappropriate or redundant care to patients within an integrated system, hence improving patient care, reducing the chance of error and diminishing redundancies.”

John Evans, president & CEO of s2a Consulting, added, “The impact of health information exchange in healthcare has already been profound. Missing data at the point of care has typically led to high percentages of repeat tests, abnormal results of previous tests not followed up, and significant missing data of their patients by attending physicians. HIEs as they have been implemented in various parts of the country are already showing improved results in these critical areas.”

“It was an honor to address this group of health care executives,” said Ted DellaVecchia, Principle at Strategic Alignment Partners. “They were engaged in our session and clearly resonated with our proven methodology that leverages a competency of integration and the seamless exchange of healthcare information to yield valued results, such as: health system operational efficiencies, advancement of coordinated care delivery models, and or general improvements in cost and quality of care.”

About Health Leaders of New York (HLNY)
HLNY represents professionals who manage the business affairs of healthcare organizations throughout the New York Metropolitan area. No other professional association is more essential for meeting the career needs and interests of healthcare executives in New York State. The 1500+ members come together for networking and events, career advancement, professional enrichment, and continuing education. HLNY is the pre-eminent organization for Healthcare Business Professionals in the Greater New York Area.

About ICA
ICA was formed to take innovative technology developed by practicing clinicians and informatics professionals at Vanderbilt Medical Center to the broader health care market. ICA provides a comprehensive HIE solution to hospitals, IDNs, communities and states, including: a comprehensive clinical information engine; portal and communications platform; interoperability capabilities; EHR-Lite; disease management and analytics and reporting tools. ICA empowers caregivers to make informed decisions at the point of care with its standards-based interoperability to help health care enterprises achieve operational efficiencies across multiple providers and settings. Visit www.icainformatics.com.

KALISPELL , MT / NASHVILLE, TN – August 17, 2011 – Informatics Corporation of America (ICA, www.icainformatics.com) and the Health Information Exchange of Montana (HIEM) announced today that as of June 6, 2011, it has upgraded three hospitals and one Community Health Center in northwestern Montana to ICA’s CareAlign® HIE solution. ICA is providing the technology and infrastructure for a multi-facility regional health information exchange (HIE) that will ultimately include over 30 medical facilities serving a population of more than 150,000 people widely dispersed over 13,800 square miles of mountainous terrain that poses challenges to providing effective and efficient healthcare.
Kip Smith, Executive Director of Health Information Exchange of Montana (HIEM), said, “Upgrading and expanding our use of CareAlign will help us to increase our participant base and functionality, improving service to our physicians and the patient population that rely on the HIEM to provide the exchange and flow of clinical information when and where it is needed. This newer, more advanced platform has expanded our database capacity and provides security enhancements that will allow streamlined migrations to further upgrades and, in turn, more powerful care coordination.”

The enhanced CareAlign platform capabilities include:
• An improved and updated user interface
• A stronger authentication process which enhances security through a question and answer method similar to what is used in banking
• A password recovery feature which helps users who have forgotten their password
• Changes to enable a more efficient laboratory result review
• Advanced display for HIPAA indicators improving clarity and usability

Initial participants in the expanded HIE use will be North Valley Hospital in Whitefish; St. John’s Lutheran Hospital in Libby; Northwest Community Health Center in Libby; and Kalispell Regional Medical Center in Kalispell.  “The HIEM has been a pioneer in the use of HIE nationally, especially as it relates to use in broad geographic regions,” said John Tempesco, Chief Marketing Officer at ICA. “Upgrading to a newer version of CareAlign will enable substantial improvement in the ability of clinical personnel to provide the highest quality care coordination to the patients in the region who are participating in the exchange. With every release of the CareAlign platform, ICA strives to improve usability, expandability and security to drive adoption, cost effectiveness and confidence in the solution.”

The HIEM is a not-for-profit healthcare organization located in Kalispell, Montana. Six hospitals, two Community Health Centers and over 25 clinics comprise the area’s healthcare system, including Glacier Community Health Center, HealthCenter Northwest, Kalispell Regional Medical Center, Northwest Community Health Center, North Valley Hospital, Northern Rockies Medical Center, St. John’s Lutheran Hospital, St. Luke Community Healthcare, and a number of owned and independent physician clinics. All have disparate legacy healthcare information technology on various platforms and in different locations.

About The HIEM
Health Information Exchange of Montana (HIEM) is a not-for-profit organization located in Kalispell, Montana. It is a network of hospitals and health clinics located in northwest and north central Montana. The purpose of HIEM is to provide a means through which individuals and organizations may collaborate to improve access and delivery of health information services to residents of the northwest Montana region. The organization plans to develop projects to create a more coordinated and integrated system of services to improve and increase access to healthcare, reduce duplication of services, and increase efficiency in providing healthcare to the populace of northwest Montana and surrounding regions.

About Informatics Corporation of America (ICA)
Informatics Corporation of America (ICA) was established to take innovative technology developed by Vanderbilt Medical Center to the broader healthcare market and now delivers a comprehensive HIE solution to hospitals, IDNs, communities and states. Unmatched in its ability to yield cost efficiency, improved patient care, and better outcomes, ICA’s CareAlign solution captures complete data to enhance the decision making process. ICA’s CareAlign intelligence engine empowers HIEs to leverage existing core systems to construct a longitudinal patient record. CareAlign also features provider/patient portals, secure clinical communication, NHIN compliant interoperability, EHR-lite and population management tools. Visit www.icainformatics.com; follow us on Twitter: www.Twitter.com/icainformatics; and Facebook: www.facebook.com