New York Health Department Moves to Centralize Statewide Health Information Network with Public Health Law Amendments
The changes would require "patient data to be contributed to the statewide data infrastructure and used for statewide reporting and analytics for public health surveillance and Medicaid purposes."
In a notice published today, the New York State Department of Health is proposing amendments to the state’s Public Health Law that would enhance statewide health information tracking through the Health Information Network for New York (SHIN-NY).
SHIN-NY, established in 2016, is the health data infrastructure that allows participating health care providers to share patients’ medical information and coordinate patient care.
The system is designed to help care providers share information securely and efficiently, and reduce medical errors that might occur when a patient is treated by multiple providers.
The proposed amendments, following up on a $2.5 million allocation “for modernizing health reporting systems” by the state legislature in 2023, would further standardize and centralize the SHIN-NY system.
The stated goals of the lengthy proposal include both protecting patient privacy and transforming SHIN-NY “into a functional resource for the analysis and reporting of statewide health information for authorized public health and health oversight purposes.”
Why are the amendments on the table now? The proposal explains:
“As the COVID-19 and requirement to use the Hospital Emergency Reporting Data System (HERDS) for crucial public health reporting pandemic demonstrated, the current framework for SHIN-NY data collection and reporting is insufficient to enable timely analysis and decision making in situations involving an emergent public health concern. By providing for a statewide data infrastructure and explicitly requiring all SHIN-NY participants to submit data for aggregation, these amendments will ensure that facilities and the Department are not required to navigate and implement an ad-hoc or emergency data collection procedure during future public health scenarios of urgent concern.”
In other words, during a public health emergency, the New York State Health Department wants quick access to statewide health information in order to make policy decisions.
The new system will not just provide a way for participating health care providers to report patient health information to the state. It will require them to do so.
Centralizing the System
While the current SHIN-NY system is designed to facilitate data sharing between providers using different health information management systems, the amendments would create a centralized system for participating providers to use.
The new centralized system (or “widespread, non-duplicative interoperability,” as the DOH wordsmiths put it) would bring together: