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PeerPlace® and Rochester RHIO Close the Gap on Elder Services
PeerPlace® and the Rochester (NY) RHIO collaborate to provide comprehensive care for older adult residents of Monroe County.
Perspective: Rochester RHIO closes the gap on eldercare services
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Source: Patty Enrado, NHINWatch.com
Date: March 1, 2010
In early February the Rochester RHIO enabled its participating physicians to see what eldercare services its patients in Monroe County were receiving via a Community Care Summary. Having the additional data will close the gaps in care with their elderly patients, said Ted Kremer, executive director of Rochester RHIO.
It's too early to tell how care treatment will be impacted, but feedback from the physicians has been positive. Many were "amazed" by and unaware of the care being rendered to their patients, Kremer said. "We're capturing the other side of the patient story," he said. "A lot of elder care is not provided in the doctor's office."
The ability for physicians to see what the eldercare services have been rendered to their patients has its roots back in 2004 when the New York Office of Aging, under Governor George Pataki, created New York Connects and developed the regulatory framework to improve eldercare and enable the elderly to stay at home. The New York Connects program established regional Long-Term Care Advisory Councils to assess gaps in care and drive better coordination of care.
The Long-Term Care Advisory Council delivered a study on an alternate level of care to the New York Dept. of Health in April 2009. The study identified the gaps and offered a solution: Inform physicians through regional health information organizations what services were being rendered to their elderly patients. "Health information exchange was the natural solution," said Kremer.
Rochester RHIO began working with PeerPlace Networks, a local software vendor that aggregates and manages client encounter data for health and human services organizations. Its Web-based services are being used in 26 counties in the state. PeerPlace® operates like a health information exchange for social service entities, Kremer said.
New York State had already worked through many standards and policy issues around privacy and HIPAA. "Absent that, we'd be at square one," Kremer said. Instead, Rochester RHIO and PeerPlace® were able to tackle the technical issues of linking PeerPlace's data to the RHIO's HIE platform, Axolotl's Elysium. "Both vendors could support the Web-services model to link the two different master patient indexes," Kremer said.
Thus far, the physicians can access Community Care Summaries for 20,000 patients. Approximately 13.6 percent of the patients in Monroe County who are being taken care of by Rochester RHIO physicians are over the age of 65. The remaining six counties served by the RHIO have a total of 13 percent of patients over the age of 65. Upstate Western New York has an aging population that is increasing, Kremer said.
The goal is to bring in the other elderly patients in the remaining six counties, in which PeerPlace® has a presence and Rochester RHIO serves. With this Web-services model, PeerPlace® can plug into the other five RHIOs in the state, Kremer said. PeerPlace's work in perinatal social services is also a natural next area of care to address for Rochester RHIO, he said. Physicians would be informed of the care given to their patients outside of their domain.
Rochester RHIO will release a survey instrument in the fall for a qualitative study that will be conducted by the Health Information Technology Evaluation Collaborative (HITEC), which assesses and evaluates the state's health IT strategy, including evaluating projects that were awarded HEAL funding. A quantitative study may be ready to be conducted in 2011 or 2012.
Long-term care, chronic care and eldercare experience a great deal of coordination problems, which create significant gaps in care and rising costs around complex eldercare services. "There's a huge amount of value for doctors and patients in connecting all care," Kremer said. Unfortunately, this area has received scant attention and funding.
With a growing elderly population, the focus may shift. And if Rochester RHIO's early physician anecdotes translate into qualitative and quantitative benefits, the shift may happen quickly.
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