Healthix’s www.healthix.org new alert system helps to improve care for high-risk patients. The system enables care managers to receive real-time alerts when their patients are admitted to or discharged from a hospital, which helps to improve care coordination and reduce avoidable hospital re-admissions.
Healthix’s patient alert system known as Clinical Event Notifications, triggers over 5,000 monthly real-time updates to case managers about their high-risk patients enabling them to better navigate crisis situations and develop comprehensive healthcare plans to further their care in the future.
The Brooklyn Health Home (BHH) www.thebrooklynhealthhome.org coordinating care for over 8,000 at-risk patients, has used Healthix’s alert system with successful results. Community-based care managers are now able to respond to their patients’ urgent care needs, including visits to emergency rooms and to know when patients are admitted to the hospital.
BHH has also implemented protocols that are triggered once a care manager receives an alert. For example, care managers must visit hospitalized patients within two business days and conduct case conferences with the clinical team.
In the third quarter of 2014, BHH care managers received over 1,300 clinical event notifications from Healthix, and timely responses to these alerts increased by ten percent from February to September of 2014.
Oscar www.hioscar.com, an innovative health insurance company representing 17,000 members in New York has also used the Clinical Event Notifications system for over six months. Healthix’s system notified Oscar’s medical team of 66 emergency room visits and hospital admissions in the past six weeks.
This enabled Oscar’s nurses to appropriately coordinate activities with the Hospital Discharge Planner on post and acute services, arrange and authorize outpatient rehabilitation, and authorize the delivery of medical equipment and supplies.
In addition to BHH and Oscar, a growing number of healthcare organizations using the system includes NYU Langone Medical Center, Mount Sinai Health System, North Shore-LIJ Health System, Lutheran Medical Center, Visiting Nurse Service of New York, Federation Employment and Guidance Service, ProHEALTH Care Associates, NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene plus others.
Currently, patient health data in Healthix is accessible only to healthcare providers within New York City and Long Island. However, in 2015, the Statewide Health Information Network of New York (SHIN-NY) www.nyehealth.org will expand and connect healthcare providers and case managers to critical patient health information anywhere in the state provided there is patient consent.