Behavioral Health Information Network of Arizona (BHINAZ)

Transcription

1 Customer Success Story Behavioral Health Information Network of Arizona (BHINAZ) BHINAZ Reduces Headaches by Moving to the Cloud

2 Page 2 of 5 Behavioral Health Information Network of Arizona (BHINAZ) Table of Contents Page 3 The Challenge Page 3 Page 4 Behavioral Health Information Network of Arizona (BHINAZ) is one of only two healthcare information exchanges (HIEs) in the country specific to behavioral health. The other is in Nebraska. Along the same lines as medical HIEs which connect hospitals, doctor offices, specialists, pharmacist, and lab companies BHINAZ creates a central repository of consolidated patient records for behavioral health providers, which include counseling centers, children s services, detoxification centers, and crisis providers, among others. This enables improved patient safety and healthcare quality, as well as reduced healthcare costs by serving as a library for demographics, diagnoses, allergies, medications, lab results, and the like for behavioral health providers in the network. Nationally, the push is toward integrated care care for individuals with both behavioral health and medical health problems, says Laura Young, executive director of Phoenix-based BHINAZ. A lot of times, if someone goes to the emergency room with a behavioral health problem, by law they have to be kept for 72 hours, Young adds. Hospital staff members often don t give a lot of treatment to such patients because their history is unknown. We want to help get their existing care provider over to the hospital for intervention, Young explains. For that reason, BHINAZ works closely with the Health Information Network of Arizona (HINAz), a medical HIE. We get physical data from them, and then that s data we would have available to anyone connected to us, Young says. BHINAZ is working on getting alerts from HINAz on hospital and clinic admission discharge information so it can take that message and route it to our providers for integrated care, she adds. The next phase of that relationship involves getting all of the clinical data available in HINAz including lab results, diagnoses, treatments, and so on in both the behavioral and medical HIEs in the state.

3 Page 3 of 5 The Challenge BHINAZ wanted to create a network for behavioral health groups throughout Arizona using the NextGen application. It also wanted the ability to consolidate and be able to share information with other behavioral health groups in the state. Formed as a limited liability company (LLC) in June 2013, startup BHINAZ didn t want to make a heavy investment in infrastructure, which made a cloud-based partner a logical option. In addition, the HIE wanted to work with a company with a healthcare background that understood its needs especially as they relate to HIPAA compliance as well as solid references from other organizations. It was paramount that BHINAZ be able to scale its infrastructure as it grows. Though currently connected to 10 organizations, the goal is to have several hundred organizations connected to us, Young says. ClearDATA proposed two virtual servers and one physical server to comply with software vendor NextGen Healthcare s requirements. BHINAZ uses the physical server for production storage of its data and the virtual servers for a testing environment. When we re sure it s working right, we move it to the production server, the live one that everyone s using, Young explains. BHINAZ also considered a collocation option, but was unable to find a data center with the same depth of healthcare expertise. ClearDATA has a history of working with healthcare providers and following HIPAA rules, with safeguards in place, she adds. In addition, ClearDATA was able to show strong value for the price, they had previous experience hosting the same EMR that BHINAZ uses, and they came highly recommend by Dignity Health.

4 Page 4 of 5 The Results ClearDATA s fully managed cloud platform has enabled BHINAZ to focus its time and resources on growing its business rather than on managing IT infrastructure. We ve had fewer headaches because we don t have to worry about maintaining equipment that s all taken care of by ClearDATA, Young notes. That s a huge factor for us because we have so many other priorities that we have to focus on. As BHINAZ continues to grow and expand its capabilities, it s happy to have the ability to scale as needed. We haven t hit the max of what we might be looking at, Young explains. By having a reliable, high-performance infrastructure powering the BHINAZ platform, the organization has a bright future ahead.

5 About Us ClearDATA is the nation s fastest growing healthcare cloud computing company. More than 310,000 healthcare professionals rely on ClearDATA s HIPAA compliant cloud computing HealthDATA platform and infrastructure to store, manage, protect and share their patient data and critical applications. For more information 1600 W. Broadway Road, Tempe AZ (800)