WNYers Encouraged To Get Involved In HEALTHeLINK™

A non-profit organization, HEALTHeLINK™ is a new system that allows doctors to have access to crucial patient information, no matter where they are. Records are stored electronically, and physicians and medical personnel sign up for software that will allow them to view patient records – including current prescriptions and recurring medications as well as test results and patient charts.

The goal behind this is to eliminate so many of the medical errors that could be avoided, if only doctors had access to the information that they need to correctly diagnose and prescribe medications. Many medications can have devastating side effects when taken together, and this will help prevent such mistakes.

It will also allow physicians and surgeons to collaborate on cases with other specialists across the country; thanks to HEALTHeLINK™, a physician in Oregon will be able to get expert advice on charts and test results from a specialist at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in a fraction of the time it would have taken before.

“The value to the patients is that the data will be available at the point of care,” says Dan Porreca, executive director of HEALTHeLINK™. “If someone ends up in the emergency room, doctors might not know what medications they are on. This allows doctors to have those relevant records immediately.”

Studies have shown that approximately 98,000 deaths a year result from dangerous drug combinations and other mistakes that could be avoided if physicians had access to all the information they need.

Those statistics are what really pushed the partnership and HEALTHeLINK™ forward – all involved knew that they could make a world of difference; they just needed to get involved.

Even if a physician is signed up to participate in HEALTHeLINK™, patients are not automatically enrolled in the program. Each individual must sign a release form in order to have his or her records available through the HEALTHeLINK™ system, and that’s where HEALTHeLINK™ is really trying to get the word out.