Doctors Pursue Electronic Records

A collaborative of area physician groups is beginning to implement a $1 million grant to bring together more than 400 doctors through an electronic health record (EHR) system.

The grant from the Medical Society of the State of New York was initially awarded in 2007 to the Catholic Independent Practice Association of WNY (CIPA). CIPA was among six organizations statewide to receive $4.58 million collectively that flowed through MSSNY from the New York State Health Information Technology Grant.

CIPA has spent the last two years working with Buffalo Medical Group, Lifetime Health Group, Dent Neurological Associates and University at Buffalo Associates, which jointly make up the Buffalo Area Physicians Information Exchange (BAPHIE).

The group has contracted with HEALTHeLINK™ to help create a system to allow interoperability between five different software systems.

The first group of physicians will begin testing the system in late 2009, with the rest coming onboard over the next 18 months, says Dennis Horrigan, president of CIPA.

“The significance is we have a group of doctors from these different organizations coming together to design this,” he says. “It speaks to the fact that the medical leadership in Buffalo is interested, willing and is in the process of working through these very complicated issues.”

Already, the participants have invested funding of their own to help get the system off the ground – and that bodes well for its future success, says Liz Dears, senior vice president for legislative and regulatory affairs at MSSNY.

“It’s nice to begin to really actually see these grants bear fruit and actually begin the connectivity component and grow interconnectivity across these regions of New York state,” she says.

About 1,000 physicians will be linked through the six projects statewide, a fraction of the 63,000 practicing physicians across New York.

“It’s a little toe in the water, but we’re hoping now with the federal monies coming down to the states ... you’re going to see adoption rates increase dramatically over the next five years,” Dears says.

The system will allow physicians to use a nationally standardized format to transmit clinical information, including patient diagnoses, prescriptions, test results and laboratory reports.

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