Alameda County Care Connect Partners With Thrasys Inc., to Create a Unique Social Health Information Exchange to Coordinate Care for Vulnerable Populations
SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Thrasys, Inc. (“Thrasys”), a subsidiary of UpHealth Holdings, Inc., today provided an update on the Company’s unique Social Health Information Exchange.
In 2016, the State of California funded eighteen Whole Person Care pilot programs to improve health outcomes for the State’s most vulnerable residents. Alameda County was one of the funding recipients. To achieve the stated objectives of this program, Alameda County Care Connect, an initiative of the Alameda County Health Care Services Agency, was determined to build a large-scale data aggregation infrastructure called the Social Health Information Exchange or SHIE. Thrasys, Inc (“Thrasys”), a San Francisco-based integrated Care Management software company and a subsidiary of UpHealth Holdings, Inc., was chosen in 2018 via a competitive bidding process as the technology partner to turn County’s vision into reality.
Over a little more than two years the Alameda County Care Connect and Thrasys teams collaborated to build a unique information exchange where data from physical health and behavioral health care systems, health care utilization data from health plans and social care data from the homeless management information system (HMIS), Social Services Agency, and justice system are aggregated together in unique ways that allow the County and its contracted providers to close gaps in the safety net to coordinate and accelerate care for a large number of the county’s most vulnerable residents.
More than fifteen community-based organizations currently provide data to the SHIE. The SHIE also powers an application called the Community Health Record or CHR, which helps end users find people in the community they care for, better understand the breadth of their needs and the connections they have, and coordinate with other peer providers across twenty-five different organizations to deliver health and social care. Providers across the county are embracing an expanded vision of an individual’s health that expands beyond medical care to also include behavioral health care, housing navigation, and social supports. The SHIE and CHR are key tools for Alameda County Care Connect’s innovative program design and have garnered interest among other local and state governments challenged by delivering cross sector care to vulnerable populations. Users of this system can currently access records of more than 600,000 unique County residents and coordinate care for more than 22,000 residents who are enrolled in the Care Connect program.
“Thrasys SyntraNet system helped us bring our innovative concept to life, transforming the county’s data integration efforts and closing gaps in the safety net to accelerate care,” said Dr. Kathleen Clanon, Medical Director of Alameda County and the Executive Director of Care Connect program. “The SHIE and CHR have enhanced communication and care coordination across many sectors that work to improve the health status and quality of life of our most vulnerable consumers.”
Thrasys SyntraNet cloud-based platform, available via desktop or tablet, provides community workers and care teams with a view of the whole person including the physical and behavioral health status and housing needs of their clients. These tools help care teams deliver necessary care and connect with other clinical and community-based organizations to better coordinate a care plan. This system has also proven to be instrumental in supporting Alameda County’s pandemic response with readily available reports and analytic dashboards to identify people whose comorbidities made them vulnerable for hospitalization or death if they contracted COVID-19.
Thrasys and Alameda County have also tackled complex state, federal and local privacy regulation within system design including an innovative cross-sector information sharing authorization that consumers use to opt-in for additional data sharing to engage a whole person set of providers. “Thrasys SyntraNet has allowed us to be nimble and provide an integrated care delivery platform for our partners,” said Cristi Iannuzzi, Director of Strategy and Implementation. “Our complex multi-sectoral data privacy requirements change often and we have developed a system that helps us comply with the changing regulatory landscape. The Thrasys team works with us diligently to implement our privacy framework correctly which is critical to build trust with our community partners.”
“Our health care system needs to be more integrated and coordinated so frontline staff at agencies, community clinics, and hospitals across the country can access the right information in a timely fashion easily with a click of a button,” said Ramesh Balakrishnan, PhD, Chief Executive Officer of Thrasys Inc., “Providers need a ‘whole person view’ of their patients to provide care in the most timely and appropriate way. Our partnership with the Alameda County Care Connect team provides a rare opportunity to establish this kind of innovative and integrated care delivery model that could prove to be the future of public health in the country. We look forward to continuing our initiative with Alameda County and with our other integrated care delivery partners in California and across the country.”
About Alameda County Care Connect
AC Care Connect strives to support and promote increased coordination and effective, personalized care across all providers through systems improvements, while including the strength and support of the consumer’s personal networks in the care planning. Through standardization of practice, development of universal tools, and sharing of consumer health records, we hope to improve our consumers’ experience while engaging in services.
About Thrasys, Inc.
Thrasys provides a comprehensive technology platform to manage health for individuals and populations with complex medical, behavioral health, and social needs. Thrasys’ customers are health systems, health plans, physician groups, pharmacy benefits managers, county and community organizations launching integrated care programs to coordinate services, improve outcomes and reduce costs.
Thrasys, Inc., is the Integrated Care Division of UpHealth Holdings, Inc.
About UpHealth Holdings, Inc:
UpHealth is a global comprehensive digital health technology and tech-enabled services platform (the “Platform”) that empowers providers, health systems and payors globally to manage care for people with complex medical, behavioral and social needs, while dramatically improving access to primary care. For more information, visit www.UpHealthInc.com
Contacts
For Thrasys:
Sean Leous
Sean.leous@westwicke.com
Phone: 646-866-4012
