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Digital Exchange of Health Records Possible with HEALTHeLINK™

By Harold McNeil
01/22/09 06:34 AM
NEWS STAFF REPORTER

Imagine that your physician is in Buffalo, but you are having a medical crisis in Niagara Falls.

Wouldn’t you like to have the medical professionals treating you in Niagara Falls to have instantaneous access to your medical records?

This is what several local health care executives, physicians and other medical professionals think would be preferable and have been working toward for about two years.

On Wednesday, they officially launched just such a regional clinical exchange called HEALTHeLINK™ during a ceremony held in the corporate offices of Computer Task Group, 800 Delaware Ave.

“What is important about this effort is we want people’s personal health information to follow them wherever they are and to be available at the time they’re being seen [by a health professional for medical assistance],” said Dr. Michael Cropp, president and chief executive officer of Independent Health.

Cropp, who also is chairman of the board of HEALTHeLINK™, said that a part of the aim is to have patients’ medical information recorded electronically and uniformly digitized so that the physician accessing the information is faced with a minimum of guesswork when minutes may be crucial.

Another component of that effort includes safeguards to ensure that information is not misused or accessible to unauthorized individuals.

Patients’ medical information is far less safe now, said Cropp, because when it is on paper, patients don’t really know who has access to it.

“Whereas, with the electronic record you can require levels of security to access information, and our approach is to give the patient the authority as to who can access their own information. And, if there were any kinds of attempts to access information that a physician wasn’t given the rights to, we can track that, which is more than we can do with a paper system,” Cropp said.

The HEALTHeLINK™ clinical exchange is part of the goals being set by both Gov. David A. Paterson and President Obama, said Lori Evans, deputy commissioner of health information and technology with the state Department of Health, who attended Wednesday’s ceremony.

“I know there’s still a lot of hard work [to be done], but I have no doubt that all of you collaborating together can really see this through and focus on adoption and really getting every physician in the area to take advantage of these tools,” Evans said.

Evans noted that Obama, in his inaugural speech Tuesday, advanced the idea of pursuing health information technology with Secretary of Health and Human Services Thomas Daschle.

It is “a very important underpinning to help the forum, and I think we’re going to see a lot more support and effort in that respect,” Evans said.

Others attending Wednesday’s ceremony included Daniel Porreca, executive director of HEALTHeLINK™, and Dr. Anthony Billittier IV, Erie County health commissioner.

hmcneil@buffnews.com