VIENNA, Va. and DALLAS, April 16, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- eHealth Exchange, one of the nation’s largest health information networks, announced today its newest network participant, ADVault, Inc., the creators of MyDirectives. The MyDirectives platform allows individuals to upload or create, store and share their advance directives, advance care plans and portable medical orders like POLST forms. Now integrated into eHealth Exchange, the ADVault Exchange™ global repository is accessible by any healthcare provider participating in the eHealth Exchange for the patients they treat. This reduces the burden health organizations face in trying to get this critical information directly from patients or their caregivers during times of crisis.
ADVault also announced that personal COVID-19 statements can now be added as a type of advance care planning document that consumers can store for free in the ADVault Exchange. Now, more than 75 percent of all U.S. hospitals, including the USNS Comfort in Los Angeles and USNS Mercy in New York City, have immediate access to advance care plans including, possibly, updated details such as desires to be cared for “in place,” for a ventilator or other specific healthcare wishes.
“During this pandemic, people are frequently alone without an advocate in the room and potentially unable to speak for themselves, and hospitals are resisting paper documents from patients for risk of infection,” explained Scott Brown, co-founder and president of ADVault. “So now it is more critical than ever for people to have confidence our healthcare system cares enough about you to hear your voice, access your goals of care and talk to the people you’ve asked to speak for you. We are honored to work with eHealth Exchange to help more people have such confidence.”
Dallas-based ADVault is a global, person-generated health data company credited with inventing digital advance care planning in 2007. MyDirectives.com and MyDirectives MOBILE allow people to upload paper advance directives (e.g., Caring Conversations®, Five Wishes® and the Veterans Administration’s form 10-0137), digital advance care plans such as MIDEO® and the MyDirectives uADDTM, the new COVID-19 personal statements and portable medical orders such as POLST and MOLST forms. The service is entirely free to consumers. The platform is financially supported by providers and health insurers such as Humana and UnitedHealthcare who want to help their members have a voice in their care.
“Even before the current pandemic, we as a healthcare community understood that advance care plans are imperative to better serve people by understanding their wishes for care,” said Jay Nakashima, executive director of eHealth Exchange. “ADVault’s addition of personal COVID-19 statement functionality is a significant addition to the value that eHealth Exchange is bringing to our healthcare ecosystem. We thank ADVault and its integration partner Zen Healthcare IT for putting this collaboration on the fast-track so our participating hospitals and health information organizations can help more people during this intense global crisis.”
In normal circumstances, providers and caregivers use the eHealth Exchange to access patient information from outside their own facility to ensure a complete clinical picture and to make more informed decisions for better care. Advance care planning documents, including the COVID-19 statements that individuals are recording with their doctors, nurses and loved ones, on file with MyDirectives are now being pulled into electronic health records to empower caregivers with vital information to help guide clinical decision-making.
“Everyone at eHealth Exchange and at Zen moved quickly in recent weeks as the global health crisis caused leaders to realize the growing importance of advance care plans,” said Mike Munoz, ADVault’s director of product. “We are impressed with the entire team’s effort to focus on behalf of consumers and their goals of care.”
About ADVault, Inc.
Since 2007, Dallas, Texas-based ADVault, Inc., is the world’s leading all-digital advance care planning platform via the award-winning MyDirectives and MyDirectives MOBILE interfaces, now with consumer users in over 50 countries. MyDirectives lets people create, store, update and share the free MyDirectives digital advance care plan or upload any third-party advance directive (such as documents from Caring Conversations®, Five Wishes®, the VA Form 10-0137 (U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs), advance care plan, COVID-19 personal statements or portable medical order. Additional information can be found at www.advaultinc.com, MyDirectives.com or this TEDx Talk.
About the eHealth Exchange
The eHealth Exchange, a 501(c)3 non-profit, is among the oldest and largest health information networks in America and is most well-known as the principle way the federal government shares data between agencies and with the private sector. The eHealth Exchange network, which is working in 75 percent of all US hospitals, is leveraged by more than 30 electronic health record (EHR) technologies and 61 regional or state health information exchanges (HIEs). Four federal agencies (Centers for Medicaid and Medicare, Department of Defense, Department of Veteran Affairs, and Social Security Administration) participate in the network to share patient information with private sector partners as well as other agencies. In all, the eHealth Exchange supports secure exchange of the records of more than 120 million patients. www.ehealthexchange.org / @ehealthexchange
About Zen Healthcare IT
Zen Healthcare IT is an interoperability technology and consulting firm. Zen helps all stakeholders in healthcare - vendors, providers, payers, HIEs, and ACOs - simplify interoperability. Using technology tools and years of interface development and support experience, Zen’s solution architects and engineers design and build use-case driven solutions for health information exchange. The Zen team solves problems ranging from data acquisition, data normalization and aggregation, and data delivery challenges. Zen’s national client-base leverages Zen’s broad range of services, on-demand engineering, and disruptive Gemini Integration as a Service platform helps overcome interoperability obstacles and creates sustainable health information exchange infrastructures. Learn more at http://www.ConsultZen.com.
Contact:
Dawn Van Dyke
eHealth Exchange
dvandyke@ehealthexchange.org
703.864.4062
For ADVault: Heather Cabral
West End Strategy Team
heather@westendstrategy.com
202.550.6880