Brooklyn bridges: The Brooklyn Health Information Exchange aims to unite the borough's chaotic health landscape

Government Health IT
March 24, 2008

A “ Tower of Babel ’s” worth of languages and customs make Brooklyn , NY a captivating place to live or visit but a challenging arena in which to practice medicine. The variety of spoken languages creates barriers and gaps in health information and an aging, chronically ill population adds to the complexity. Additionally, for Brooklyn ’s elderly, lost paperwork and misunderstood medical directions are common occurrences on the circuit from hospital to nursing home and back again.

“We have a population that is a melting pot,” said Justin Schwartz, director of patient information systems at Sephardic Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. The facility is one of 11 medical providers in the Brooklyn Health Information Exchange which launches November 2008.

“Many times, we may have the doctor’s name but not their telephone number,” said Nancy Daurio, a registered nurse and associate vice president for management information systems at Maimonides Medical Center. About half of the patients at the teaching hospital are elderly.

Both believe a new regional health information organization (RHIO), anchored by Maimonides and 10 other Brooklyn hospitals, nursing homes, home care providers and payers will ease those difficulties. BHIX will adopt a universal medical language, sharing 6 data elements: patient demographics, allergies, medications, problem lists, provider care teams and advance directives. Clinicians will access patient information via a Web portal connected to an enterprise master patient index, which will link records managed by the member institutions. The organizers are confident that the new network will improve the quality of health information, and consequently, overall medical care across the community.