2019 will mark my eighth year as Hixny’s CEO and I’ve seen a lot of change during that time. When I started, Hixny had fewer than 100 participating organizations. Today, three out of four providers and 100 percent of hospitals in our established region participate. Our 329 participants include providers in Vermont, the Hudson Valley and New York’s Southern Tier.
In many ways, 2011 and 2018 were similar. In 2011, we expanded by merging with the Adirondack Regional Health Information Exchange. At the end of 2018, we’re hard at work connecting providers in nine new counties south of the Capital District. It’s a monumental effort we’ve undertaken to support providers and patients in those areas who need access to critical information—and to support the efforts of the Statewide Health Information Network for New York (SHIN-NY) to reach the connectivity, participation and consent targets outlined in its 2020 Roadmap.
In 2019, we are well-positioned to propel ourselves forward by focusing on advancing system availability, use and customer satisfaction, which complement our ongoing promotion of participation and connectivity. We will also work to provide new resources through the Quality Measurement Pilot Program, which Hixny was awarded as part of New York State’s Advanced Primary Care Initiative.
In the coming year, we plan to continue strengthening Hixny data to support the shift from volume- to value-based payment. Thanks to our achievement of HITRUST Certification with MARS-E, you can rest easier knowing our emphasis on security—and we’re a year ahead of the state schedule, so we can leverage Medicaid claims data to support participant needs. We’ll use the momentum of that success to innovate in ways that benefit providers and patients alike.
I don’t have a crystal ball. But, as the SHIN-NY vision continues to unfold and as patients increasingly embrace online access to health information, can you imagine how our advanced capabilities might support consumer-directed exchange or new types of data-driven activity in the healthcare community? That’s the sort of question our team is contemplating.
We’ll keep you posted as we accelerate our thinking and our work in the year ahead.
Note: This was originally published in Hixny’s 2018 annual report and magazine, Exchanges. If you didn’t receive a copy and would like one—or a few—mailed to you, please contact info@www.hixny.org. We’ll ship it right out.
