Jersey Health Connect, a regional HIE connecting 18 hospitals in Northern and Central New Jersey, was honored by the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) for its 2011 CHIME Collaboration Award at the CHIME11 Fall CIO Forum in San Antonio, Texas.

The project, called Jersey Health Connect, involves the 18 hospitals and RelayHealth, which is supplying the underlying technology to support the health information exchange initiative.

Started as The Northern and Central New Jersey Health Information Exchange Collaborative, Jersey Health Connect (JHC) is an ad-hoc collaboration of multiple hospital systems, provider organizations and long-term care facilities. JHC was incorporated as a not-for-profit organization in 2010 with the goals of building on connectivity in the region to accelerate members health information exchange activity; improve care coordination through real-time data exchange; build on an already financially stable model; and ensure ongoing compliance with national standards, and privacy and security considerations.

In 2007, Atlantic Health wanted a way to facilitate electronic collaboration between its hospitals and affiliated physicians without regard to whether or not a physician had implemented an electronic health record system. Working with RelayHealth allowed Atlantic Health to provide EMR functionality to physicians that were concerned about the complexities a full EMR would add to their practices.

The Collaboration Award, which recognizes the best collaborative effort as evidenced in a document co-authored by a CHIME Foundation firm and a CHIME member, wasn’t the only recognition given by CHIME at the Fall Forum. Dedra Cantrell, CIO of Emory Healthcare based out of Atlanta, Ga., was honored by CHIME as its 2011 Innovator of the Year.

Cantrell led the way for implementation of Emory’s Global Patient Registration, which helps highly integrated and coordinated approach to registering patients was crucial to maximizing the efficiency of care and delivering the best patient experience.

The Global Patient Registration (GPR) application consists of several layers that include existing applications, surrounding application development, new third-party products and the introduction of new services to move data quickly and effectively.

As Cantrell and her team began to study the registration process and separate systems’ need for data, it found that data could originate in three different applications, interact with two separate billing systems and interface to many other applications that are used later in the process of patient care.

Emory’s solution had to meet several requirements, said Cantrell. It had to leverage an existing enterprise master patient index to enable patient registration from a single application. It had to standardize the patient data model and the patient registration process, as well as searches for patient information.

GPR also was intended to help users by using computer-driven requirements, process and business rules to help them through the registration process. And it was intended to improve patient experiences by eliminating their need to answer duplicative questions in different areas of the organization.

Also getting an award from CHIME was Glen Tullman, Chief Executive Officer of Chicago, Ill.-based Allscripts. Tullman won CHIME’s Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to the healthcare IT industry.