Customer
Clinify Health
Headquarters
Chicago, Illinois, United States
Website
Organization type
Digital health company supporting healthcare organizations that provide care for underserved communities
Product
The customer
Clinify Health
Clinify Health is a healthcare technology company that supports Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) and clinics in underserved communities to achieve financial stability through value-based care optimization. The Clinify Health platform integrates EHR, financial, and social data to support tailored, value-based care delivery in an intuitive manner. The platform also provides predictive modeling of medical and socioeconomic risk factors so clinicians can proactively address gaps in care in dynamic and innovative ways.
Nate Pelzer, chief executive officer, and Eric Peebles, chief technology officer, founded Clinify Health when Pelzer identified a need among providers, in underserved communities, as they transitioned from fee-for-service to value-based outcome reimbursement. With Pelzer’s background in healthcare contracts and finances and Peeble’s technical expertise, the two joined forces to create a solution aimed at empowering providers to achieve their financial goals by meeting Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS) targets and deliver higher quality patient care at a lower cost.
The challenge
To integrate the Clinify Health platform with its customers’ systems
Peebles required a robust interoperability solution that would enable secure, real-time data sharing with different EHRs, including smaller ones that are self-hosted on-premises or third-party hosted.
“We needed a proven health data integration solution that would enable us to access the data we need for our platform to deliver value,” Peebles said.
Another challenge? Finding talent during a global, industry-wide IT staffing shortage. Because FQHCs are required to hire within the community they’re serving, finding highly skilled IT professionals can be more challenging than in other communities. “It’s hard to find data engineers, data scientists, and database administrators to build an infrastructure,” Peebles said. “Every company is experiencing this, but in areas where FQHC are located, the problem is magnified.”
Security was also top-of-mind for Clinify Health as they searched for an integration partner. Many of their provider customers are smaller, making them targets of cybersecurity attacks. “For our customers, having confidence that Clinify accesses of their data is secure is extremely important,” Peebles said.
Clinify Health’s onboarding time decreased from over one month to a few weeks.
Their first integration took seven months. With Envoy, their second integration is taking about four weeks.
The solution
Envoy iPaaS
After evaluating several options, Clinify first selected Rhapsody Integration Engine. “Other interoperability solutions we found didn’t offer the flexibility to integrate with the variety of platforms used in the communities we serve,” Peebles said, adding that Rhapsody offered the “flexible technology and the service level that we require from a partner – they are serious about helping us succeed.”
The Clinify Health team deployed Rhapsody in their AWS environment and began creating integrations with several customers. While Peebles and his team could build the integrations within Rhapsody, they quickly determined they also wanted a partner who could build and maintain the integrations for them. “I wanted to go to someone and say, ‘I need appointment data,’ and for them to come back with options for how we might access the data,” Peebles said.
While Clinify has an experienced IT team – about 80% of its employee base is comprised of IT professionals – it’s important that they focus on product development and onboarding new customers, not on creating critical integrations. Peebles decided to pivot to Envoy iPaaS with integrations built, monitored, managed, and maintained – on the customer’s behalf – by the Rhapsody team. “I learned about the Envoy offering and didn’t waste any time making the transition because it fit exactly what we needed,” Peebles said.
Pivoting to Envoy allowed the Clinify Health team to tap into even more expertise and guidance from the Rhapsody team, empowering them to focus on what they do best while letting experienced interoperability experts handle integration work behind the scenes. Relying on Envoy, which adheres to the most stringent security standards globally, gives Clinify and its customers peace of mind in exchanging sensitive, protected health information.
“The fact that I don’t have to spend thought cycles on the areas that Rhapsody manages is a huge benefit. I can shift my team from figuring out integrations to getting new contracts established with partners, vendors, and customers. Having Envoy has definitely been a huge boost for us. My product developers don’t have to worry about changes to different EHRs because Rhapsody maps to a standard data model. My team always sees the same data regardless of what’s on the other side.”
Eric Peebles
Co-founder and chief technology officer
Clinify Health
Architectural workflow diagram
The results
Envoy empowers Clinify Health to onboard customers faster and drive product innovation
Peebles explained that Envoy minimizes the downstream impact when EHR vendors make changes to their systems. “My product developers don’t have to worry about changes to different EHRs because Rhapsody maps to a standard data model. My team always sees the same data regardless of what’s on the other side,” he said.
“Envoy gives us a point of contact, so that as we’re building our product roadmap, we have an experienced partner to guide us.” Clinify Health currently uses Envoy to integrate its platform with several provider customers who use the Athena Health platform. Soon, they will use it to integrate with others who use NextGen and Qvera.
Also on the horizon for Clinify Health: working with health plans that see value in having the Clinify Health solution deployed in provider clinics in their networks. Having real-time access to clinical data for their members can help health plans meet HEDIS targets.
“As a product company that’s continuously growing and building our solution, we want to drive innovation and bring it to our clients fast as possible, Peebles said. “The fact that I don’t have to spend thought cycles on the areas that Rhapsody manages is a huge benefit. I can shift my team from figuring out integrations to getting new contracts established with partners, vendors, and customers. Having Envoy has definitely been a huge boost for us.”