News from Southern Tier HealthLink

Southern Tier HealthLink Newsletter

WWW.STHLNY.COM

March 2012

In This Issue

Southern Tier HealthLink Offers New Record Sharing Service

STHL Releases new "Timeline" for our Facebook page

STHL Featured in HIMSS White Paper

Patricia Blackman Joins STHL

NY Medicaid Incentive Program Update

STHL Staff

FAST FACTS

Current Stats:

Patients:

Providing affirmative

consent: 111,591

Organizations connected to STHL:

Hospitals: 5

Practices: 121

Imaging Center: 1

Long Term Care Facilities: 2

Public Health Department: 1

Providers and Clinicians:

Total users; 1,892

Patient Portal:

Total Users: 14,918

February Transactions:

Records sent out and queries: 41,486

Southern Tier HealthLink Implements Community PACS Viewer

Diagnostic Images From Five (5) Community Sources Available:

Southern Tier HealthLink (STHL) is now offering a community picture archiving and communications system (PACS) viewer to all clinicians at participating healthcare organizations. Users of the STHL Health Information Exchange (HIE) can quickly and easily view PACS images and reports from the community using the eHealth Global community viewer.

With the STHL community viewer, clinicians can access PACS images and reports without having to track down the physical media or struggle with multiple viewers. Workstation setup is easier and no additional logins are required to view images (STHL Web Portal user account is required).

The community viewer is used to view images from Delaware Valley, Lourdes, Wilson Memorial, Binghamton General, and Chenango Memorial hospitals. Images from Southern Tier Imaging continue to be accessed through their proprietary

viewer at this time.

"We are pleased to provide our connected healthcare providers the ability to gain instant access to medical images from any of our participating locations, and gain direct access to each location in the community that holds the images they need. This will provide clinicians in our region with a complete picture of their patient's health, enhance patient safety by reducing unnecessary radiation exposure and help us 'connect the dots' for better healthcare," said Christina Galanis, executive director of STHL.

Future plans for the STHL community viewer include embedded links into outbound Continuity of Care Record (CCR) and Continuity of Care Documents (CCD).

Contact Kirsten Griffin at 651-9150 to set up your STHL HIE Web Portal account today.

Southern Tier HealthLink Offers New Record Sharing Service

Southern Tier HealthLink (STHL) is now offering a clinical document sharing service to medical practices that use the MEDENT Electronic Medical Record/Electronic Health Record (EMR/EHR) system. The service enables practices to exchange clinical documents electronically with other practices using the MEDENT system and exchange clinical documents with the STHL Health Information Exchange (HIE). The intent of the service is to streamline the process of sharing information between healthcare organizations to save time, money and avoid costly errors. Practices will receive clinical documents electronically, replacing data entry and scanned documents. Information shared between practices and the HIE is imported directly into the proper fields of their MEDENT EMR/EHR system, for ease of use by providers and clinical staff.

This service supports exchanging of medical records between any practices that use the MEDENT EMR/EHR. STHL is looking forward to expanding the service to enable sharing with additional EMR platforms.

Currently, the following practices are subscribing to the MEDENT EMR to EMR Referral and

Bidirectional CCD Exchange Services:

� Cardiology Associates PC

� Endwell Family Physicians LLP

� Southern Tier Surgical Clinic

� Karen R Banks-Lindner DO PLLC

� Binghamton Gastroenterology Associates PC

� Keith A Nichols MD PLLC

� Diabetic Care Associates

The participation of these practices is significant to what is becoming a very robust health information exchange for the community at large. STHL looks forward to the addition of more MEDENT practices in the future.

To inquire more about this service, please contact Kirsten Griffin at 651-9150.

STHL Releases new "Timeline" for our Facebook page

STHL has released the new "Timeline" for our Facebook page!

Check out our new look and let us know what you think. Don't forget to "Like" us- and remember, you can use our Twitter app to follow us at @NYHealthscape and view our most recent Tweets!

STHL Featured in HIMSS White Paper

STHL is proud to be featured in the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) white paper, "Reducing Readmissions - Top Ways Information Technology can Help". The white paper contains a section highlighting the utilization of Health Information Exchange (HIE), which was authored by Dr. Wayne Teris, MD, of United Health Services (UHS) Medical Group. STHL's involvement at the evacuation centers during the flood in September of 2011 is used as an example of how the accessibility of patient records can help reduce unnecessary hospital admissions/readmissions.

Click here to read the full article and to access links for the HIMSS white paper as well as the complete story on STHL's involvement during the flood.

Patricia Blackman Joins STHL

Patricia Blackman joins the team as Administrative Secretary providing Administrative Support to Director Christina Galanis, as well as the entire STHL team. Patricia holds an AAS Degree in Secretarial Science from Broome Community College. She held many positions during her long career with the IBM Corporation. Most recently she was part of the Information Technology team providing Contractor Management support for commercial accounts across the United States. "I am very excited and honored to embark on a new and different phase of my career working in the healthcare community." Patricia was born and raised in Endicott, NY and currently lives in Silver Lake, PA.

NY Medicaid Incentive Program Update

As of now, the state Medicaid program is in full launch. People who have registered on the CMS side should be receiving notification from NY Medicaid within days of completing the CMS steps.

If you have not yet registered with CMS or attested to NY Medicaid for your 2011 A/I/U payment, there is some pre-work that you should be doing now. The first and most critical step is to ensure that you have a valid Medicaid FFS ID.

Two things to note:

Each individual provider needs an ID, a group ID is not sufficient.
Even if you only service Medicaid Managed Care, you will need a FFS ID to receive payment.

If you don't already have this ID, the process of acquiring one can take some time so get started now if you have not already done so. Once these steps are complete, you will be ready to register with CMS and attest to A/I/U.

When do I have to complete registration and attestation in order to receive payment for 2011?

All eligible professionals enrolling to receive payments for 2011 must follow the following timetable:

First complete the CMS enrollment - it must be completed before you can start the NY Medicaid registration process.
On the NY Medicaid side, eligible professionals must be registered and attest by March 30, 2012 in order to qualify for the NY Medicaid EHR Incentive program payment.

In order to receive notifications from NY Medicaid about the EHR Incentive program, go to the link below and subscribe to the "Practitioner EHR Incentive Program" category.