By Jessica Kent
Great Lakes Health Connect, a Michigan HIE, is partnering with a cloud-based data exchange provider to address the need for faster communications.
Great Lakes Health Connect, a Michigan HIE, is partnering with a cloud-based data exchange provider to address the need for faster communications.– Great Lakes Health Connect (GLHC) has announced a partnership with Secure Exchange Solutions (SES) to advance health information exchange, enabling providers across Michigan and neighboring states to electronically complete, store, and access patient records.
Through this partnership, Secure Exchange Solutions will deliver SES Direct to the Great Lakes Network to address the need for faster, streamlined communications. SES Direct aims to improve the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of clinical workflows, while also enabling greater peer-to-peer collaboration to positively impact patient outcomes.
SES Direct will replace GLHC’s legacy platform with an enterprise grade, highly scalable, integrated solution connected to a nationwide trust network and robust directory service.
The organizations will leverage automated provisioning and employ an industry-leading support team to make the seamless transition from old to new. Direct integrates with any application, including EHRs, patient portals, clinical data repositories, patient health applications, and practice management systems.
GLHC will connect SES Direct to its internal InterSystems Healthshare platform to allow providers across multiple care delivery continuums in Michigan and neighboring states to electronically store patient records.
The collaboration will enhance GLHC’s current patient record protocol, enabling hundreds of facilities within its network to securely transmit and easily access critical patient care information. SES Direct will make it easy for providers to more effectively coordinate care, ensure patient compliance, and streamline procedures.
This alliance with SES will add to GLHC’s efforts to improve health information exchange in Michigan and beyond. In 2017, the organization connected to six other health information exchanges to advance data sharing for patients and providers across the Midwest.
Called the Heartland Project, the network extends interoperability across state lines and allows for real-time health data access and patient information sharing.
“Great Lakes Health Connect is proud to participate in the Heartland Project and to offer our participants out-of-state information about their patients in real-time,” Doug Dietzman, Executive Director of GLHC, said at the time.
“This expanded capability supports our goal of reducing the time required and the financial burden of exchanging health information among healthcare providers and across communities.”
Also in 2017, GLHC announced that it would deliver alerts to providers about social determinants of health data. The health information exchange network selected Holon Solutions to assist with integrating socioeconomic information into the exchange.
“Holon takes the sea of data and makes it very relevant to a specific patient and his or her needs. This is critical, because our users are looking to us to help them solve their very local problems,” Dietzman said.
“We want to constantly anticipate answers to, ‘How do we advance the care and experience for this patient in front of us today?’ and ‘How can we be more intuitive and make providers’ lives easier?’”
Together with Secure Exchange Solutions, GLHC will continue to work toward seamless information exchange for providers in Michigan and surrounding states.
“We’re a forward-looking organization that is constantly working to help our 129 member hospitals and 4000+ participating practice offices across the state improve care delivery and health outcomes,” said Dietzman.
“As an industry leader, Secure Exchange was the logical partner to collaborate with for Direct as it is standards-based and highly secure, enabling our members to deliver the highest-quality healthcare.”