3 health information exchanges (HIE) in the Midwest exchanges are exchanging sufferer data in an important step forward to establish and test a Patient Centered Data Home that could serve as a model for exchanging information between HIEs nationwide.
The 3 Midwest exchanges step is part of a larger pilot funded by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology to improve interoperability between HIEs. It is the 3rd and greatest pilot for the Strategic HIE Collaborative (SHIEC), which is advancing the Patient Centered Data Home effort.
Organizers consider the approach can instantly tie together the 48 HIEs that are members of SHIEC.
The Indiana Health Information Exchange (IHIE), Michiana Health Information Network (MHIN) and East Tennessee Health Information Network (etHIN) are exchanging data reached an agreement to enable data-sharing among their HIEs, making sure that a sufferer’s healthcare record follows them wherever they seek care.
3 health information exchanges (HIE) in the Midwest exchanges are exchanging sufferer data in an important step forward to establish and test a Patient Centered Data Home.
Those HIEs, and 4 others, are part of the PCDH Heartland initiative. The aim is for all 7 to eventually sufferer data, enabling providers utilizing those exchanges to access that information.
The Strategic Health Information Exchange Collaborative is a proposed national trade association for HIEs that is acting as the project lead. The other pilots are already in production. SHIEC is a not-for-profit national consortium of statewide, regional and community health information exchanges and a trade association that helps member organizations through the exchange of concepts and business practices as well as through public education and advocacy.
“This is an amazing first initiative toward a much larger goal,” said John Kansky, president and CEO of IHIE, which is deployed in Indianapolis. “At the completion of this pilot, we will be exchanging health information among 7 HIEs and across 5 states.”
Other Heartland partners involve Great Lakes Health Connect (Grand Rapids, Mich.), HealthLinc (Bloomington, Ind.), the Kentucky Health Information Exchange (Frankfort), and The Health Collaborative (Cincinnati).
Each of SHIEC’s PCDH pilots, involving the Heartland initiative, is utilizing a standards-based approach to make sure that the PCDH is both cost-effective and scalable and finally benefits the patient. Victorious implementation will indicate that the PCDH can enable HIEs nationwide to seamlessly deliver data across state lines, across health systems and across referral regions.
The technology “isn’t the hard part, by any means,” Kansky says. “It is using available standards. The hard part is always getting humans and agencies to agree on what we are going to do, getting through the legal agreements, and settling different rules in several states about permissions. Tech individuals are mostly waiting on the rest of us to get the details laid out.”
“Due to the tourism in East Tennessee, etHIN has medical information on sufferers from all 50 states and beyond who were treated by an etHIN participant while traveling here,” claimed Leigh Sterling, Executive Director of etHIN, Knoxville. “The Heartland Project will permit us to notify the sufferer’s home health information exchange that a patient living there was treated in the etHIN region. Knowing about medical events that appear outside their regional area will permit the hometown physicians to develop a more complete patient medical record, thus giving more informed care for their sufferers.”
Kansky observes other use cases for information exchange. As an instance, he notes that several residents of northwestern Indiana regularly commute to Chicago for work, and hence could be regularly treated by providers in both Indiana and Illinois. “HIE tends to respect state lines, and this is an attempt to figure out how best to exchange that information.”
By linking one HIE region to another, the expanse of interoperability begins to cover the nation, executives say.
“Each of our agencies is victoriously exchanging healthcare data with providers in our own communities,” stated Kelly Hahaj, CEO of South Bend, Ind.-based MHIN. “It makes sense that the next evolution is to link our networks to enable a person’s medical data to be available whenever and wherever care occurs, suitable and securely.”
ONC is funding the initiative for twelve months, hoping it to enable the secure exchange of sufferer health records.
3 health information exchanges (HIE) in the Midwest exchanges are exchanging sufferer data in an important step forward to establish and test a Patient Centered Data Home.
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