Georgia Health Connect Launches as Regional Health Information Exchange

ATLANTA, GA--(Marketwired - Nov 6, 2014) -  Georgia Health Connect (GaHC), a health information network providing integrative technology and clinical support to smaller practices, hospitals and health systems throughout the state of Georgia, today announced its launch. The regional health information exchange was founded by the Georgia Regional Health Information Extension Center (GA-HITEC) with technology powered by Liaison Technologies.

GaHC offers a user-friendly technology solution to healthcare providers typically operating in more rural and underserved areas. With GaHC, they receive the same level of technology and support as their larger counterparts to help their practices become more competitive in today's evolving marketplace.

"This is an exciting time where we stand on the brink of being able to exchange patient data in a meaningful manner," said Dominic Mack, MD, MBA, Executive Medical Director of GaHC and Co-Director of the National Center of Primary Care at Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, GA. "There is still a lot of work to be done, but our collaboration with GAHIN and our partners allows us the opportunity to provide useful information to practices and hospitals of all sizes in all communities."

"With Liaison's expertise in cloud-based healthcare integration and data management, providers that previously could not share information because of technical and financial barriers are now able to take the leap into connected health," said Gary Palgon, VP Healthcare Solutions at Liaison Technologies. "We're happy to partner with Georgia Health Connect to enhance healthcare throughout the state of Georgia."

GaHC utilizes Liaison Technologies' Health Data Management™ and EMR-Link™ platforms to provide the following services to providers in Georgia:

• Community Patient Health Record portal aggregates patient information from disparate providers and makes it available so users can search for and view a patient's medical history, including allergies, medications, complications, procedures, lab results, radiology reports and other important information.
  
  
• Lab and Radiology Exchange is a universal electronic orders and results solution that integrates lab and radiology with any practice's electronic health record (EHR). All orders originate from and return to the physician's EHR, or to a web-based portal for practices without EHR systems. Orders are checked for completeness and compliance with Medicare and lab requirements, eliminating errors that may cause patient callbacks and reimbursement challenges. Rules-driven order routing automatically sends orders to the appropriate laboratory/radiology vendor based on insurance preferences. Results are seamlessly routed to the EHR and automatically matched to the appropriate patient chart in multiple formats, including structured data, PDF, text document and links to images.
  
  
• Performance Quality Dashboard is a prepackaged dashboard to help providers monitor summary quality measure reports on the provider's patient population, as well as participate in different quality and outcome initiatives.
  
  

To create a more robust product for information exchange, GaHC has also partnered with Quest Diagnostic and DrFirst. Through these partnerships, GaHC will offer electronic lab ordering and results to Quest Diagnostics and a medication history data tool from DrFirst.

GaHC will soon connect to Georgia Health Information Network (GaHIN), the statewide health information exchange, offering providers operating in rural and underserved communities more access to comprehensive and up-to-date patient information throughout the state and nationally.

Though many of GaHC's members may exist within the more rural, remote niche, all providers, hospitals and health systems throughout the state seeking a simple, yet comprehensive, user-friendly technological support service should consider joining GaHC. To get connected to GaHC, please contact the Provider Support Center at 1-877-658-1990 or info@gahealthconnect.org.

About Georgia Health Connect

Georgia Health Connect (GaHC) is a mission-based Service Area Health Information Exchange created by the National Center for Primary Care (NCPC) at Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM) [d.b.a. Georgia Health Information Technology Regional Extension Center (GA-HITEC)] in partnership with Liaison Technologies. GA-HITEC was established within the NCPC at MSM and was awarded over $20 million by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) in 2009 to furnish technical support to over 4000 of Georgia's healthcare providers and 56 rural and critical access hospitals. To get connected to GaHC, please contact our Provider Support Center at 1-877-658-1990 or info@gahealthconnect.org. www.gahealthconnect.org

About Liaison Technologies

Liaison Technologies is a global data management and integration company. It provides innovative solutions to integrate, transform, harmonize, manage and secure critical business data on-premise or in the cloud. With a comprehensive array of business-to-business and application-to-application integration and data transformation services, as well as on-premise and cloud-based data security solutions, Liaison's practitioners implement data management infrastructures adapted to each client's specific business requirements. Headquartered in Atlanta, Liaison has offices in the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden and the United Kingdom. For more information, visit www.liaison.com.

About GA-HITEC

The Georgia Health Information Technology Extension Center (GA-HITEC) is Georgia's only federally endorsed health information technology center focused on providing technical assistance to providers and hospitals throughout the entire electronic health record (EHR) implementation process and beyond, including assistance with the reporting required to qualify for and receive Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services EHR Incentive Program payments. GA-HITEC's broad and practical Health Information Technology (HIT) expertise assists practices and hospitals with improving the quality of care for patients and maximizing overall productivity through the meaningful use of EHR systems.