First Quarter, 2025

HealtheConnections Welcomes

New President and CEO, Board Members for 2025

HealtheConnections is excited to announce senior leadership changes effective January 1, 2025.

Elizabeth Amato has taken the role of president and chief executive officer after three successful years as chief operating officer, preceded by Rob Hack, who retired at the close of 2024.

“Innovation, continuous improvement, and close collaboration with participants, partners, and peers are the hallmarks of HealtheConnections’ success. My commitment is to preserve the values that have brought us here, while bringing new ideas and a forward-looking perspective to ensure our organization and partners thrive in a changing healthcare landscape.”

Elizabeth Amato

President and CEO, HealtheConnections

In addition to Amato’s appointment, the HealtheConnections Board of Directors selected new leadership and a new slate of members to its ranks.

Board of Directors Leadership Changes:

Paul Kaye, MD, Executive Vice President for Practice Transformation, Sun River Health serving as the Board of Directors Chair
Seth Kronenberg, MD, President & CEO, Crouse Health serving as the Board of Directors Co-Vice Chair
Robert Weisenthal, MD, Ophthalmologist, CNY Eye Care and Clinical Professor for the Department of Ophthalmology at Upstate Medical University serving as Board of Directors Co-Vice Chair

New Board of Directors Members:

Demetra Alberti, Executive Director, Rural Health Network of South-Central NY
Kathryn Anderson, MD, PhD, Commissioner of Health, Onondaga County
Eric Brosius, Vice President of Technology Services for Sun River Health
Kara Hines, DNP, RN, CHCIO, Associate Vice President of IT and Associate Chief Information Officer, United Health Services
Judith Watson, RN, BSN, MPH, CEO, Westchester Community Health Center
Corey Zeigler, Chief Information Officer, Helio Health

Read the full press release here.

A Population Health Perspective

Empowering Community-Based Organizations to Leverage Health Information Exchange Data

In 2024, HealtheConnections launched a new initiative to assist Community-Based Organizations (CBOs) to drive and inform their work by utilizing Health Information Exchange (HIE) data. As deeply embedded members of the community, CBOs play a crucial role in strengthening communities, addressing local needs, and providing support to marginalized populations. We are helping these organizations expand their data infrastructure by leveraging HIE data to inform care coordination and collaboration, personalized and target interventions, and make meaningful data-driven decisions to support future planning and growth.

We have partnered with Inclusive Alliance and their network of nearly 50 nonprofits throughout Central New York for the first phase of this initiative. Through education and outreach, together we are:

Raising awareness of the data available through HealtheConnections.
Providing technical assistance around using data to plan, implement and monitor their work with clients.
Sharing best practices for using HIE data to inform CBO activities.
Supporting data tracking for chronic disease prevention and management programs, Community Health Worker services and care coordination.
Collecting feedback around their specific data requirements and needs to ensure we serve and support them better.
Creating reports for CBOs to provide easy access to the data they need right at their fingertips.

The work with Inclusive Alliance is an initial effort and we will look to expand to other regions and types of organizations in the future to better support our community partners.

If you work at a CBO and want to learn more about the services that we provide, click on the button below to connect!

Statewide Health Information Network for New York

Public Health Projects on the Horizon

HealtheConnections continues to support public health priority initiatives in New York State (NYS). We have been working with the Statewide Health Information Network for New York (SHIN-NY) and other NYS Qualified Entities (QEs) on surveillance related to:

Respiratory Illness
Outbreak Reporting
Childhood Obesity

Stay tuned for updates in 2025!

Elevating Data Quality

A Journey, Not a Race

Throughout 2024, HealtheConnections worked with New York eHealth Collaborative (NYeC) to improve our data quality through an ongoing initiative called the Data Quality Improvement Project (DQIP). We have shared this initiative in previous newsletters as we worked to successfully meet or exceed our targets. Most notably, we focused on the following dimensions of data quality:

Standardization of lab test codes for reporting requirements
Better structured race and ethnicity data for public health and social care programs
Ensuring application of Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standards for data exchange

Participating in this statewide initiative helped us identify and develop opportunities to deliver consistent high-quality data to our participants. These enhancements support clinical care delivery, public health efforts, and social care programs, such as New York’s 1115 waiver.

As always, HealtheConnections will continue to prioritize efforts to improve the quality of clinical data within our growing HIE, using what we learn to continue generating valuable information and driving meaningful use for our network.