Three Beacon Communities Expand HIE using Axolotl's Elysium Exchange
Axolotl Corp., the nationwide leader in health information exchange (HIE) services and solutions, today announced with Beacon Community Award winners HEALTHeLINK, the Western New York clinical information exchange, Quality Health Network (QHN), a supporting organization of the Colorado Beacon Consortium (CBC), and the Utah Health Information Network (UHIN), a sub-recipient of the Utah Beacon Community grant, the expansion of their HIEs using Axolotl's Elysium® Exchange suite of applications. The awards are three of 15 health IT pilot communities receiving grants totaling $220 million, funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
As part of the Beacon Community Cooperative Agreement Program for a national electronic health records (EHRs) initiative, HEALTHeLINK received a $16.1 million award, the largest award in the United States, the Colorado Beacon Consortium was awarded $11,878,279, and HealthInsight, the awardee of the Utah Beacon Community grant received $15,790,181 to implement health information technology pilot projects in their regions. The awards are part of a $2 billion effort to achieve widespread meaningful use of health IT and provide for the use of EHRs for each person in the United States by 2014.
Powered by Axolotl's Elysium Exchange platform, the HEALTHeLINK HIE provides physicians and health care providers throughout Western New York with a community-based system to electronically share important medical and clinical information more efficiently.
Through the Beacon Community initiative, HEALTHeLINK, the P2 Collaborative of Western New York (NYeC ONC pending regional extension agent) and 40 community partners will advance and leverage resources as well as areas of excellence. Over the next 36 months, HEALTHeLINK will engage its stakeholders, including hospitals, providers, consumers, and payers to implement clinical decision support tools such as electronic diabetes guidelines (EHR prompts and alerts), to aggregate quality improvement reporting, medication management (including Beer's Criteria) and hospital provider reconciliation. Other activities include implementing registries and point-of-care alerts and reminders and innovative telemedicine solutions to improve primary and specialty care for diabetic patients, decrease preventable emergency room visits, hospitalizations and re-admissions for patients with diabetes and congestive heart failure or pneumonia, and improve immunization rates among diabetic patients.
"We are grateful for the recognition and excited about the opportunity to continue our work with Axolotl in order to improve care for our patient community," said Daniel E. Porreca, Executive Director of HEALTHeLINK, the Western New York Clinical Information Exchange. "Using Elysium Exchange is one area where we will be able to assist achievement of meaningful use and optimize diabetes control for primary care providers and specialists relevant to Western New York's health care goals for diabetes."
The Colorado Beacon Consortium, made up of executive-level representation from four mission driven, not-for-profit, Western Colorado-based organizations, includes Mesa County Independent Physicians' Practice Association, Quality Health Network, Rocky Mountain Health Plans and St. Mary's Regional Medical Center as well as a private citizen/consumer representative. Steve Reynolds represents consumers, private businesses, and is a member of various Western Colorado community and business associations including Club Twenty. Funds from the Beacon Grant will be used to strengthen the robust infrastructure already in place for clinical data exchange; integrate data more effectively at the practice level; achieve specific cost, quality and population outcomes; and demonstrate sustainability as a model for other communities. Beacon funds will leverage other funding provided by the federal Regional Extension Center (REC) program as well as nearly $4 million in private philanthropy provided by The Colorado Health Foundation for use by QHN participants.
"The Colorado Beacon Consortium's mission is to optimize the health and quality of life for all members of the community through the meaningful use of health information technology, and improve the cost-effectiveness and quality of their health care regardless of personal means or coverage status," said Dick Thompson, CEO of Quality Health Network. "With this grant and with support from Axolotl and our Beacon Consortium's many area participants, we will be able to positively impact health and health care throughout the seven county Beacon Consortium area. The project's impacts will also help providers and patients throughout Western Colorado as well as provide a model for others in our country."
The Grand Junction community has been repeatedly recognized on a national level for its low costs and high quality of care. In 2005, the community created Quality Health Network to improve care coordination and care transitions through the use of Axolotl's clinical messaging and health information exchange platforms. Using Axolotl's Elysium Exchange, Quality Health Network (QHN) is expanding its network to include more than 20 hospitals and attendant physicians in the 40,000 square miles of Western Colorado. Participants will access QHN to securely share clinical information, improve patient outcomes, and reduce costs.
HealthInsight, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the health care systems of Nevada and Utah, will lead the pilot in Utah and a team that includes the Department of Health, University of Utah, Intermountain Healthcare, and the Utah Health Information Network. Through the Beacon Community funding, the Utah Beacon Community will work to achieve better outcomes for patients at lower costs overall by monitoring performance measures and by increasing availability, accuracy and transparency of quality reporting, leveraging existing infrastructures to improve care coordination and reduce health systems costs throughout the region, and improving public health reporting.
Furthermore, the Utah Beacon Community will tap into other federal programs that aim to extend the use of health IT, including the Regional Extension Center (REC) Program, also led by HealthInsight to assist Utah physicians in fully using their electronic health record (EHR) systems, and the Utah Health Information Network's secure HIE, the state-designated health information exchange.
Using Axolotl's Elysium Exchange, UHIN will be focused on engaging providers to adopt and use EHRs, and securely share information among physicians, to improve the care of their patients and to reduce disparities among underserved populations. Over the next 30 months, the Utah Beacon Community will begin work in Salt Lake, Summit and Tooele Counties. UHIN currently serves all the hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers, national laboratories and approximately 90% of the medical providers in Utah.
"Utah has been a leader in health information technology and we are honored for this recognition. With the Beacon Community grant and utilizing Axolotl's solutions, Utah will be able to further extend health information exchange throughout the state," said Jan Root, President of the Utah Health Information Network.
"We congratulate HEALTHeLINK, QHN and UHIN on recognition by ONC of their already significant achievements in improving patient health in their communities via HIE, and look forward to their Beacon consortia leveraging the awards to lead the nation to better health outcomes," said Glenn Keet, President of Axolotl.
About Axolotl Corp
Founded in 1995, Axolotl Corp. is North America's leading provider of browser-based products and services for secure health information exchange and management. Its Elysium® Exchange suite of solutions enables health care providers to instantly share information, reduce costs, and improve quality and efficiency.
Elysium helps thousands of health care entities—including hospitals, health systems, regional health information organizations (RHIOs/HIEs), clinics, laboratories, radiology centers and physician practices—to securely exchange clinical information for more than 35 million patients. Elysium's community-wide Master Patient Index, EdgeServer(s), Interoperability Hub (I-Hub), Community Virtual Health Record (VHR), and ambulatory EMR with integrated e-Prescribing are all provided as a software service (SaaS). Axolotl-employed U.S.-based transcriptionists, combined with an integrated NLP engine, provide high-quality medical transcription services for acute and ambulatory care environments connected to Elysium HIEs.
Axolotl is based in San Jose and best known for introducing Clinical Messaging®, now at the heart of all advanced health information exchange. For more information visit www.axolotl.com and follow us on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/axolotlcorp/
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