Great Lakes Health Connect Surpasses 1 Million Referrals Across 11,000 Users with Holon

The largest closed-loop referral entity in the U.S. seamlessly coordinates care across Michigan

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Aug 14, 2019, 08:03 ET

ATLANTA, Aug. 14, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Holon Solutions, healthcare's leading data liberator, announced today that Great Lakes Health Connect (GLHC), one of the largest health information exchanges (HIEs) in the country, has surpassed access to more than 1 million closed-loop referrals statewide since Fall 2017 using Holon's CollaborNet® Referrals application.

At GLHC, Holon's point of care platform is accessible to 11,229 users at 1,078 different organizations across the state, including three of Michigan's largest health systems. Averaging approximately 600 users per day, CollaborNet Referrals through GLHC has shared more than 3.5 million attachments to ensure seamless care continuity and quality of care.

"Referrals are a core part of the machinery that makes healthcare run and a tactical aspect of operations that every organization must invest time and energy," said Doug Dietzman, chief executive officer of GLHC. "That is part of the reason that the Holon application, Referrals, which we call the Bridge, has been rapidly adopted across our network and has become essential to our large group practice and health system members who perform thousands of referrals a month. It saves them time and administrative burden by seamlessly aligning patients with the care and services they need faster and more efficiently while being able to close the loop with data and documentation."

Holon Referrals is one of three applications comprising the company's CollaborNet point of care platform. CollaborNet liberates the data to liberate the care by automatically surfacing relevant patient-specific insights curated from numerous sources to providers at the point of care within the existing electronic health record (EHR) workflow but without the need for point-to-point connections or any EHR vendor involvement.

Holon's patented technology empowers collaboration across health communities through surfacing relevant clinical and non-clinical data, including social determinants of health data, to support the coordination of care across care settings. With Holon, traditional healthcare settings, such as a primary care office, are now collaborating on the same platform as community-based organizations. Holon also automatically populates documentation and communication channels along the continuum of care, enabling providers to attach documents, check the status, and chat with the partner referral organization, all electronically. Users are updated throughout the process, reducing the need for follow-up phone calls for confirmation.

Addressing Social Determinants of Health in Flint
Before launching statewide, GLHC introduced Holon's CollaborNet Referrals solution in the Flint region to support approximately 85 provider organizations in the wake of the city's lead water crisis. In November 2017, GLHC was approached by the Greater Flint Health Coalition to assist in the implementation of a State Innovation Model (SIM) initiative. The collaborative effort engaged local physician organizations, Medicaid health plans, hospitals, specialty hubs, and a collective of community and social service organizations to meet the population health needs of 41,000 Medicaid qualified adults across Genesee County, which includes Flint.

Since the launch of the initiative, emergency department utilization among Medicaid patients attributed to participating SIM physician practices has been reduced by more than 15%. Greater Flint Health Coalition credits their success to participating providers being better able to address and coordinate a proactive response to the social determinants of health needs of the targeted populations. Following the success of this initial implementation, GLHC expanded its deployment of CollaborNet Referrals across its statewide network.

"GLHC is an inspiring model of what is possible when a multidisciplinary team of providers and other health professionals leverage intuitive, user-friendly technology to collaborate and ensure patients receive the care and services they need," said Robert Connely IV, Chief Strategy Officer of Holon Solutions. "Being able to expand across the state was possible due to the great partnership we have forged with GLHC and their relationships throughout the state. This was coupled with our commitment to deliver innovative technology that was nimble and built on a scalable architecture."

Growth Plans
Based on the success of the CollaborNet Referrals launch and adoption, GLHC plans to offer its members Holon's CollaborNet Insights application, which automatically surfaces relevant insights, such as care gaps, within the provider's workflow. In the background, Holon's patented sensors automatically take direction from GLHC, but also third-party analytics platforms, portals, outside providers' EHRs, and any other data source connected to the provider's organization and presents only the most relevant information in an unobtrusive ribbon next to the electronic chart. The CollaborNet Insights launch in Michigan is expected to occur later this year.

"The biggest industry-wide movements toward interoperability are all predicated on a query-based method of sharing continuity-of-care documents, which are blunt, very long documents that physicians don't have time or want to read," said Dietzman. "Holon knows who the patient is and what is unique about them and knows who the user is and what is unique about them. It gives us the opportunity to dip into the ocean of data we are collecting and put it into the workflow in much more discreet and specialized ways than any of those other interoperability mechanisms could conceive of doing. We're looking forward to offering more of its capabilities to our network members."

About Holon Solutions
Holon Solutions is a healthcare information technology company that liberates the data to liberate the care, putting the right information in front of the right people at the right time through our reimagined interoperability platform. Holon empowers risk-bearing organizations to optimize patient outcomes and financial performance by surfacing actionable, patient-specific insights directly to the point of care. Holon's agnostic platform CollaborNet® surfaces contextual insights within the provider workflow, seamlessly shares clinical data from health plans and vendors, and automates documentation exchange and referrals across health communities independent of the technologies in play. Our team of innovators is focused on removing the administrative burden from clinicians through our patented, sensor-based solutions. We are grateful to be recognized by Healthcare Informatics as the "2018 Innovator of the Year for Value-Based Care" and recognized by the Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) Southeastern Software Association (SSA) as the best Independent Software Vendor in 2019 at the 10th Annual Impact Awards.

For more information about how Holon helps healthcare organizations fulfill the promise of value-based care, visit www.holonsolutions.com.

About Great Lakes Health Connect
Great Lakes Health Connect (GLHC) is among the leading providers of health information exchange services in the nation. Based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, GLHC seamlessly and securely facilitates the transmission of more than a billion messages annually between 129 hospitals and over 4,000 primary, specialty, and allied care provider offices across the state. The community-based nonprofit is dedicated to improving the quality and accessibility of healthcare information by creating care-connected communities across Michigan and beyond. For more information, visit www.gl-hc.org.

Media Contact:
Linda Healan
Amendola Communications for Holon
404-725-7117
[email protected]

SOURCE Holon Solutions