The Agency for Health Care Administration (Agency) today announced that the Encounter Notification Service® (ENS®) operated by the Florida Health Information Exchange Services (Florida HIE) has delivered over 7.5 million notifications to facilitate patient care coordination since its inception in 2013. These notifications are generated by over 215 participating hospitals throughout the state and are currently being routed to 43 different subscribers, including health plans, Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), provider practices, and now hospitals. These subscribers use ENS to facilitate post-acute care coordination, avoiding unnecessary hospital utilization.
Agency Secretary Justin Senior said, “The continued growth of ENS brings benefits to patients, providers, hospitals, and health plans by sharing information about patient hospital encounters. I commend all of the health care stakeholders participating in this valuable service for their commitment to using health information technology as a means to providing better health care.”
Adventist Health System, in partnership with the Florida HIE, is the first hospital system in Florida to subscribe to ENS. This pilot partnership with Adventist Health System will place the system at the forefront of HIE adoption in the state. Going forward, Adventist will utilize these notifications to inform their clinically integrated network of their patients’ acute care encounters.
Adventist Health System’s Senior Director of Interoperability Jason Aspinwall said, “Through the use of the ENS alerting system, Adventist Health System’s Population Health Services Organization has been able to accurately monitor out-of-network admissions, better facilitate transfers where needed, and help with timely discharge planning and follow-up for our patients.”
Subsequent to Adventist Health System, four other hospital systems have contracted with the Florida HIE to deploy ENS subscriptions and two of those have fully implemented.
The Agency governs the Florida HIE in partnership with Audacious Inquiry (Ai), which provides operational infrastructure. The Florida HIE’s ENS platform facilitates improved care coordination. The ENS system also supports state and federal health care initiatives, including Statewide Medicaid Managed Care, the Medicare Shared Savings Program, and the Medicaid Electronic Health Records Incentive Program.
To date, the ENS platform is supported by Ai in 12 states and has delivered approximately 80 million notifications, benefiting over 32 million subscribed patients across the United States.
Ai’s Managing Partner, Chris Brandt said, “Effective care coordination facilitated by the Florida HIE and ENS will increasingly benefit Florida patients. We are honored to support Florida’s dedicated hospitals, physician practices, health plans, and ACOs in the shared pursuit of higher quality and more efficient care delivery.”
For more information on this and other Florida HIE services, please visit florida-hie.net.
For more information about the health information exchange, please visit fhin.net or florida-hie.net.
