"It's Evolved Quite a Bit": CIO Andrea Richardson on the Keys to Rochester RHIO's Success

Recently, Richardson spoke with Kate Gamble, Managing Editor of healthsystemCIO, about the organization’s continuous evolution, and how they’re partnering with companies like Nextgate to provide accurate clinical data at the point of care.

• For Rochester RHIO, a qualified entity of the statewide health information network of New York, is “considered one of the most progressive and innovative HIEs because of our focus on community entities outside of the clinical realm.”
• For any HIE, the true value comes in being able to “integrate data from otherwise siloed EHR systems,” said Richardson, which entails “working with data source to make sure they’re capturing data the same way.”
• The key initiatives for Rochester RHIO in recent years: rolling out a new data aggregation platform, and working with NextGate to improve data integrity through patient identification and matching.
• One of the projects Richardson is most proud of is the community health indicators report, which has “allowed our community to have a clear understanding of our overall health” by including SDOH data.
• In the six years since Richardson became CIO, “there has been an evolution in technology, and a learning curve related to that. But we have amazing staff that has really risen to the challenge every time.”