RHIO Services

Overview

The Rochester RHIO provides a range of services, which promote and support the movement towards a patient-centric view of clinical information. At the core of Rochester RHIO services are a set of policies and procedures around patient privacy and security. On top of these core community policies sits a community-wide Master Patient Index (MPI) and Record Locator Service (RLS) to identify, locate, and present medical information including lab, radiology reports and images, and other clinical information for patients who choose to participate.

Rochester RHIO's community health information exchange (HIE) supports both a query-based approach to requesting clinical information and a clinical messaging model where results are routed directly to ordering, referring, and CC’d physicians.

Data Integration

Central to an HIE is the integration and exchange of data from a variety of  IT systems from hospitals and physician offices to community-based organizations. Rochester RHIO works with each data-providing organization's staff to ensure a smooth and fairly painless approach to this technical exchange. With a strong track record in connecting hospitals, physician practices and healthcare organizations, RHIO staff quickly leverage existing hospital and lab messaging systems and portals to securely route clinical messages to the HIE and the Explore clinical query portal, and to regional healthcare providers. RHIO is connected to 30+ vendors.

Explore

Explore is a secure, web-based query portal that includes clinical data for over 1.4 million patients—accurate, up-to-date and always available. Whether in the hospital or almost anywhere else, users can immediately access the data they need when a patient or colleague requires guidance. The RHIO's secure electronic health information exchange is a valuable resource to over 5,000 authorized medical providers and their co-workers across New York's Finger Lakes region. Explore includes various types of patient health information (PHI) including sensitive health information, HIV testing, and Part 2 data providing a more complete picture of a patient's health. More: What Explore Has to Offer

Explore Image Exchange

Access diagnostic images such as X-rays, MRIs and more from hospitals and clinics across the Rochester RHIO region (13+ counties). Rochester RHIO's Explore clinical query portal includes access to your patients' radiology and cardiology images - with a diagnostic-quality viewer, instantly on any computer. Explore users can view imaging studies from hospitals and radiology centers from 14 counties and compare images in seconds. More: The Image Exchange Clinicians Need

MyResults Delivered

Already using an EHR? The Rochester RHIO can deliver electronic results directly to your practice’s EHR. No more logging into multiple portals for results. No more dollars spent on interfaces with multiple data providers. No more phoning and waiting weeks for lab results, or sending patients for another round of tests when results are not forthcoming. The Rochester RHIO works with EHR vendors to facilitate integration. This one interface will provide lab, radiology and clinical documents from all participating area labs, hospitals and radiology centers.

Physician practices with MyResults Delivered services can opt to add Image Enable Results Delivery (IERD). With IERD, imaging results are delivered to your EHR with a link directly to the diagnostic quality imaging study. The Community Service team will work with your EHR vendor to facilitate integration. This one interface will provide lab, radiology and clinical documents from all participating area labs, hospitals and radiology centers. More: Test Results Delivered Directly into Your EHR

DIRECT (Messaging Service)

Rochester RHIO provides DIRECT messaging services for our community participants. As a certified Health Information Service Provider (HISP), we are accredited as a member of the Direct Trust Organization. The RHIO HISP offers secured access thru webmail to exchange care summary and other clinical information between providers in our community.   

DIRECT is simple. It works like secure email, and can be as easy as sending an electronic fax from within an EHR. The added advantage is that the recipient can file many of the documents into the patient chart as discrete data. DIRECT messaging supports patient referrals and transitions of care. Unlike RHIO Explore, which has information from many sources, DIRECT is a point-to-point exchange allowing one care provider to send specific information to a specific provider securely. While many EHR vendors are including DIRECT as part of their product to support Meaningful Use requirements, practices do not need to have an EHR to use DIRECT with Rochester RHIO. More: Referrals and Clinical Data Delivered - As Easy As Email

Facts for DIRECT users

  • Rochester RHIO operates as a HISP – any RHIO participant can request a DIRECT license.
  • As a Direct Trust Certified HISP, Rochester RHIO seamlessly connects to other certified HISPs, including Surescripts. Several EHRs use the Surescripts HISP for DIRECT services, including EPIC, Medent, Nextgen, eMDS, Amazing Charts and Soapware.
  • Some EHRs are providing their own HISP services, including Allscripts, AthenaHealth, Cerner, DBmotion, eClinicalworks, Greenway and Medplus.
  • Rochester RHIO is connected to all certified HISPs through DIRECTTrust. Through DIRECT, users communicate across the nation to other care providers using trusted HISPs.

Rochester RHIO's DIRECT service includes a C-CDA Viewer, which allows users to view and print C-CDAs (Continuity of Care Documents). 

Our clinical messaging architecture also supports two levels of integration to third party EHR systems. Call Rochester RHIO for more information about integrating with your EHR at 1-877-865-7446 (RHIO).

Alerts/MyAlerts

Alerts: It's simple. Physician practices, home health providers, care managers, and health systems can receive Alert notifications whenever their patients are admitted or discharged from any of our regional or statewide hospitals or emergency departments. This is a Core service (paid for by New York State). Practices receive RHIO Alerts for all their consented patients. Alerts notifications are available from all the RHIOs across New York State (Statewide or Cross-QE Alerts).

To sign up for Alerts, the practice needs to have consented patients and a DIRECT address. More: RHIO Alerts Fit Your Workflow

MyAlerts is a list-based custom Alerts service, which allows participants to customize the Alerts received based on the needs of both the care provider and patient. MyAlerts is an enhancement of the core RHIO Alerts service, and can be:

  • delivered through DIRECT messaging, or
  • integrated through an EHR vendor or system

MyAlerts is a custom, value-added service that has been developed to meet specific clinical use cases and allows for the customization of clinical workflows. If you'd like to pilot customized Alerts, contact your Regional Account Representative. More: MyAlerts How You Need Them

Contribute

What is Contribute? It is the Rochester RHIO's call to participating providers to share patient data (C-CDAs) with the RHIO through EHRs. With this additional data, the RHIO will be able to provide more complete patient health records, enabling the highest quality patient care—effectively transforming the healthcare system. More: Become a Data Contributor

Subscribe/Forwarding

Rochester RHIO can provide organizations a data feed of clinical data associated with consented patients (Subscription), or a data feed based on a contractual relationship between RHIO participants (Forwarding). These value-based services are a powerful tool for participants to gather a more complete clinical record of their patients.  For more a customized quote, call 1-877-865-7446 (RHIO), or contact your Regional Account Manager.

RHIO Integration for DSRIP

Throughout New York State, there is an increased focus on improving the quality and efficiency of healthcare for Medicaid eligible patients. The Rochester medical service area is engaged with the Medicaid Redesign Project known as Delivery System Reform Incentive Payment (DSRIP). The most prominent DSRIP project in the Rochester RHIO's region is the Finger Lakes PPS, with the mission of improving the integration of healthcare delivery. The FLPPS DSRIP project includes hundreds of medical and social service organizations. For a basic review of the FLPPS DSRIP project, read DSRIP 101.

RHIO integration is a key component of DSRIP projects. All DSRIP participating safety-net organizations are required to maintain bi-directional connectivity with one of the state's Qualified Entities (QEs). The Rochester RHIO is a Qualified Entity and actively collaborates with FLPPS to support participant adoption of health information exchange services. For DSRIP participants needing RHIO services, please contact the RHIO Support Center at info@grrhio.org, or call 1-877-865-7446 (RHIO).

Secondary Use (Community Initiatives, Grants & Other Business)

The Rochester RHIO also responds to data requests to support community initiatives, grant evaluation projects, public health metrics, health/medical research, and healthcare operations. Data requests are reviewed and approved by Rochester RHIO’s Secondary Use Committee. For more information, download the Secondary Use Information Sheet. For more information, call 1-877-865-7446 (RHIO), or contact your Regional Account Manager.

EHR Connectivity

Is your EHR certified? Check out the Certified Health IT Product List to find out today.  

Our clinical messaging architecture supports integration to third party EHR systems, based on a standardized HL7 interface. 

The following EHR Vendors have connectivity with the RHIO. To activate an interface to your practice, contact your EHR vendor. 

Allscripts Professional Amazing Charts Athena Health, Inc Avairis
BlueFire Corporation COMET/Lintech DrugScan eClinicalWorks
e-MDS Epic Systems Corporation Foothold Technology Greenway Medical Technologies, Inc.
Homecare Homebase (HCHB) Homegrown Health Systems Technology, Inc (HST) iPatient Care
Medent Medisked Meditab MEDITECH
McKesson Misys (Allscripts) Netsmart Technologies (Sequest) NextGen
Office Practicum PNP PrecisionCare Software Inc. QuadraMed Corporation
Quic/Doc / DocuTrac Reliable Health Systems Seaquest SOAPware, Inc
STI Chartmaker Vitera (Sage) VorroHealth (Therap Services)  

Cross Sector Data Exchange

In April 2019, Rochester RHIO published the Cross-Sector Data Exchange: Data Use and Legal Privacy white paper, commissioned on behalf of the Systems Integration Project. Research funding support was provided by the New York State Department of Health through the New York eHealth Collaborative. The cross-data exchange paper was prepared by Harter Secrest & Emery LLP. The paper takes a look at what it would take (legally) to share data between three broad industry sectors: health, education and social services. The conclusions include that some data, but not all data, could be shared, which would  be based on the creation of a global consent policy that would need to be implemented.

Regional Data Normalization

The RHIOs three-year Regional Data Normalization project, funded by the Greater Rochester Health Foundation, is successfully building community collaboration and education for standardization of lab test codes. As of April 2016, more than 80% of lab tests now include community standardized codes, and a majority of test results sent to providers via Rochester RHIO's results delivery services also include these codes. As a result, healthcare providers can compare test results from regional labs more efficiently.

The Regional Data Normalization project has widened its focus to examine community standards for naming radiology reports and clinical documentation, which will better support healthcare providers in their efforts to efficiently access patient information to support quality healthcare. LOINC (Logical Observation Identifier Names and Codes) is a universal code system for identifying laboratory and clinical observations. From serum levels of Hepatitis B surface antigen to diastolic blood pressure, LOINC has standardized terms for all kinds of observations and measurements that enable exchange and aggregation of electronic health data from many independent systems.

The accurate coding of lab results is critical to the effective comparison of values to support patient care and quality reporting. Regional labs are working with the Rochester RHIO to address the need for accurate, standardized codes for lab results across the community. Leadership from labs, Monroe County Medical Society, and the RHIO's Regional Data Normalization (RDN) project funded by the Greater Rochester Health Foundation are collaborating to build a compendium of the 200 most common lab tests, and the LOINC codes that link similar tests.

If you are interested in learning more about Regional Data Normalization, email rhio_communications@grrhio.org.