Better Data Makes Better Patient Care Possible in Connecticut

By Russell Dexter 

When a patient leaves the hospital, the work is not over. 

Follow-up appointments, medication changes, home care, and care coordination all depend on one thing: accurate, complete information. 

Connie works with healthcare organizations across Connecticut to improve the quality of the data being shared through the exchange. One major focus has been discharge information. 

That work has made a difference. Each week, thousands more patient records now include usable details about why a patient was hospitalized and where they were discharged.

Before Connie, those details were often missing or incomplete. Without a clear diagnosis or discharge location, follow-up care can stall. Care teams may not know what happened during a hospital stay or how urgent the next step should be.  

By working directly with organizations to address technical issues and workflow gaps, Connie helps improve the completeness of this information supporting better visibility, timelier outreach, and more consistent follow-up.  

Data Quality Shows Up in Everyday Care 

Trusted, reliable data is the cornerstone of meaningful health information exchange. When key details are missing, care teams lose time while they track things down and make extra calls. Without complete information, sometimes they move forward without the full picture.

At Connie, data quality is treated as part of care coordination, not just a technical function. The goal is simple: make sure the data that reaches providers fits into real workflows and supports real decisions. 

When clinicians trust the information, they are more likely to use it, improving how the exchange is used day to day. 

Connie’s Approach to Data Quality 

Improving data quality is a shared responsibility across the healthcare ecosystem and takes ongoing attention and collaboration. Connie’s data quality is shaped by the organizations that rely on the exchange. Through a data governance committee made up of providers, health systems, and payers, participants help identify where improvements matter most. 

Connie monitors data trends and looks for changes that signal a problem. When performance drops, the team works with the source organization to understand why. Changes are tracked over time to make sure they last. The focus is steady progress, not quick fixes. 

To support work at this scale, Connie is also implementing the PIQXL Gateway, a data quality platform developed by Clinical Architecture. The platform allows Connie to evaluate incoming health records, identify where data quality breaks down, and provide participants with clear, actionable insight into where improvements are needed.  

Built on the Patient Information Quality Improvement framework, PIQXL helps Connie look beyond whether data was simply sent and instead assess how usable that data is in practice. By pinpointing where quality issues originate in clinical and analytical workflows, the platform helps reduce manual review and supports earlier, more targeted remediation.  

Moving Forward 

If your organization uses Connie data, your input matters. Raising questions, reporting issues, and participating in improvement efforts all help strengthen the information that supports care across Connecticut. 

Clearer data helps care teams act sooner and with more confidence leading to better informed decisions and better care. 

If you want to learn more about Connie’s data quality efforts or be part of this work, please reach out to info@conniect.org