Collaboration around new innovative technology improves processes and may help save lives in New York through donation and transplantation
NEW YORK, Aug. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — NewYork-Presbyterian, together with LiveOnNY, the nonprofit organ procurement organization (OPO) for the greater New York City area, and innovative Los Angeles-based medical software provider, Transplant Connect, collaborated to automate mission-critical hospital and OPO workflows across the greater New York City area.
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and other regulations mandate that all hospitals in New York and across the United States notify their assigned OPO of potential organ, tissue and eye donors within a specified time frame. The phone-based referral process in place requires nurses to manually relay to the OPO medical and other information needed to begin the donation process and can be time-consuming.
NewYork-Presbyterian, LiveOnNY and Transplant Connect began work in early 2021 to implement iReferralSM – a new interoperability-based approach created by Transplant Connect to streamline and automate the donor referral process. Since then, clinical triggers have been implemented into NewYork-Presbyterian’s electronic health record (EHR) system and the secure interface was achieved, tested, and launched with LiveOnNY’s iTransplantSM electronic medical record system provided by Transplant Connect. Automated Best Practice Alerts notify NewYork-Presbyterian nurses of potential organ, tissue and eye donors, and a streamlined, clinician-initiated workflow allows medical staff to rapidly confirm key information and securely transmit the referral electronically in only seconds – a stark contrast to the 20-30 minutes required by the old, phone-based referral process.
Through the efforts of NewYork-Presbyterian, LiveOnNY and Transplant Connect, iReferral has been launched at seven NewYork-Presbyterian hospital campuses, including: NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center, NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, NewYork-Presbyterian Allen Hospital, NewYork-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital, NewYork-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital, NewYork-Presbyterian Queens and NewYork-Presbyterian Lawrence Hospital. The interface has helped streamline the process, allowing nurses to spend more time with their patients.
“As an enterprise, we are relentless in our pursuit of improving the patient experience and outcomes,” said Chif Umejei, Vice President of Information Technology at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. “This is a classic example of the meaningful utilization of technology to impact lives of patients and caregivers.”
“At LiveOnNY we feel that iReferral is truly the future of organ, eye and tissue donation. This new system will help us and our partners save countless lives,” said LiveOnNY President and CEO Helen Irving. “Thank you to Transplant Connect and to NewYork-Presbyterian for embracing this advanced technology.”
Transplant Connect’s Founder and CEO, John Piano, shared: “Of the many iReferral Interfaces launched or currently in implementation, this NewYork-Presbyterian-LiveOnNY effort was noteworthy for a number of reasons – first, NewYork-Presbyterian’s ability to rapidly complete the steps to launch iReferral in only a few short months and, second, by launching across multiple NewYork-Presbyterian locations, the measurable impact was very substantial – liberating valuable NewYork-Presbyterian nursing resources every day while enabling more lives to be saved and healed through donation-transplantation in New York and beyond.”
About NYP: NewYork-Presbyterian is one of the nation’s most comprehensive, integrated academic healthcare systems, encompassing 10 hospitals across the Greater New York area, more than 200 primary and specialty care clinics and medical groups, and an array of telemedicine services.
A leader in medical education, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital is the only academic medical center in the nation affiliated with two world-class medical schools, Weill Cornell Medicine and Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. This collaboration means patients have access to the country’s leading physicians, the full range of medical specialties, latest innovations in care, and research that is developing cures and saving lives.
Ranked the #4 hospital in the nation and #1 in New York in U.S. News & World Report’s Best Hospitals rankings, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital is also recognized as among the best in the nation in the U.S. News Best Children’s Hospitals rankings. Founded nearly 250 years ago, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital has a long legacy of medical breakthroughs and innovation, from the invention of the Pap test to pioneering the groundbreaking heart valve replacement procedure called TAVR.
NewYork-Presbyterian’s 48,000 employees and affiliated physicians are dedicated to providing the highest quality, most compassionate care to New Yorkers and patients from across the country and around the world.
For more information, visit www.nyp.org and find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.
About LiveOnNY: LiveOnNY is a nonprofit, federally designated organ procurement organization (OPO) dedicated to saving lives, providing comfort, and strengthening legacies through organ, eye, and tissue donation. The OPO, which was established in 1978, serves a culturally and ethnically diverse population of 13 million residents in New York City, Long Island and the lower Hudson Valley. Working closely with transplant centers and hospitals, LiveOnNY coordinates organ, eye, and tissue donation for transplant, educates the public and healthcare professionals about donation and transplantation, and promotes the importance of signing up on the New York State Donate Life Registry. LiveOnNY works closely with 11 transplant centers, nearly 100 hospitals, and several tissue and eye banks. LiveOnNY is a member of the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), which oversees the organ transplant waiting list in the U.S. For more information, please visit LiveOnNY.org.
About Transplant Connect: Los Angeles-based Transplant Connect is an innovative global leader in cloud-based interoperable medical records software, analytics, tracking and communications. Its iReferralSM Automated Donor Referral technology, which is hospital EHR system agnostic, is already in place at a number of leading U.S. hospitals and is in continuing nationwide rollout. iReferral is one of the company’s many new innovations within the award-winning iTransplantSM Enterprise Software Platform and its industry-leading suite of solutions to increase, improve and expedite donation, transplantation and research. iTransplant enables real-time interoperability across the donation-transplant field and provides a backbone of electronic medical record, analytics, communications and logistics tracking solutions relied upon by organ procurement organizations, transplant centers, hospitals, eye banks, tissue banks, birth tissue agencies, research institutions and others in the U.S. and internationally. In the U.S., the iTransplant Platform helps to streamline and facilitate nearly three-quarters of all transplants from deceased donors, and the company is proud to have played a role in the approximately 60% increase in U.S. organ transplants from deceased donors that has been achieved since the launch of iTransplant software. See https://www.transplantconnect.com, email contact@transplantconnect.com or call (310) 392-1400 for more information on iReferral or other solutions available on the iTransplant Platform.