Northwell Health has gone live on secure messaging software to supplement health information exchange between provider locations.
The messaging software, from DataMotion Direct, delivers patient information across the Northwell enterprise and its many health IT systems. Northwell is the largest provider organization in New York state, with 750 outpatient facilities and 13,600 affiliated physicians
Timely delivery of patient records enable providers to give better care, improve outcomes and result in a more positive experience for patients, according to the organization. Under value-based reimbursement models, use of the messaging software and quality metrics can help determine reimbursement rates.
DataMotion Direct is integrated with Northwell’s InterSystems HealthShare HIE platform and also connects to the Siemens registration systems. Expansion to accommodate Northwell’s growth is simplified by DataMotion’s RESTful APIs and an intuitive Direct Messaging administrative portal.
Jim Heiman
Integrating the secure messaging and HIE capabilities also can ease interoperability, which is a constant challenge for the information technology group, says Jim Heiman, associate vice president of clinical information systems and HIE program director at Northwell.
The DataMotion software also integrates with the organization’s Siemens registration systems, and when Northwell Health needed help putting together its first tangible use case, the vendor helped Northwell developers build application programming interfaces.
“DataMotion gives us a reliable, easy-to-deploy and economical interoperability solution that fills communications gaps, accelerates healthcare delivery and easily pays for itself by achieving quality metrics,” Heiman explains.
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To ensure information security, Northwell purchases subscriptions from DataMotion to send and receive secure messages from providers and other stakeholders with the messages following a set pattern to ensure a recipient gets the message, understands it and can respond. This helps to avoid providers and patients getting a message but not knowing why they are getting the message and having no follow-ups or metrics to understand.
“We’re able to direct traffic so the patient gets the right follow-ups and can follow them appropriately,” Heiman adds.
After a patient leaves the hospital and has a consultation with a physician, the hospital will send a message to the physician and front staff to make sure they know the patient is coming.
Other workflow processes using the DataMotion Direct secure messaging software are designed to make certain everyone knows where the patient is next going and that the doctor who made the referral receives the right information from the other physicians and staff. “This has been one of our easiest yet beneficial projects,” Heiman says.
Now, Northwell plans to expand its use of DataMotion Direct secure messaging for admitance/discharge/transfer event notifications, care transitions and other clinical workflows that require data exchange with parties external to Northwell’s enterprisewide EHRs, according to Heiman.
Joseph Goedert
Goedert is senior editor of Health Data Management, a SourceMedia publication.