SANDERSVILLE, Ga., Sept. 09, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Georgia Regional Academic Community Health Information Exchange (GRAChIE), which serves healthcare organizations and providers across Georgia through the sharing of healthcare information, announced today that they have received the Community Partnership Award from The Strategic Health Information Exchange Collaborative (SHIEC) for their work during Hurricane Irma.
For the past two years, during the height of hurricane season, health information exchanges (HIEs) in the Atlantic coastal region were called upon to rapidly promote and deploy services to assure interoperability as hurricanes such as Irma (2017) and Florence (2018) became national emergencies. Hurricanes Florence and Irma were recognized as two of the strongest hurricanes since 1851, based on maximum wind speed.
Hurricane Irma was the first Atlantic hurricane outside of the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico known to attain 180-mph sustained surface winds. GRAChIE established nine emergent connections in 24 hours to facilitate access to clinically relevant information for any Florida resident that arrived in Georgia for care during Hurricane Irma. GRAChIE’s experience and guidance helped the North Carolina HealthConnex team to implement emergent connections to five HIEs in 48 hours.
Hurricane Florence resulted in the evacuation of millions who left their local area where healthcare records were housed. GRAChIE was one of several HIEs that rapidly worked to allow the exchange of health records across state lines to provide additional support to providers who were treating individuals escaping the coastal areas.
“We are extremely pleased to be recognized for our work with recent hurricanes that have impacted our region,” said Tara Cramer, CEO of GRAChIE. “Interoperability is always an important element of healthcare, but this is doubly so during an emergency. GRAChIE works very hard to improve access to patient health data and to facilitate care transitions via secure EMR to EMR connections.”
About GRAChIE
The Georgia Regional Academic Community Health Information Exchange (GRAChIE) serves healthcare organizations and providers across Georgia seamlessly bringing health information from one healthcare professional to another. GRAChIE provides health information in a secure, electronic format allowing healthcare professionals to appropriately access and securely share a patient’s health information electronically through EHR system. https://grachie.org/