Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) continue to grow in interest as many regional and state-wide initiatives begin to unfold. Highlighted below are few current articles and resources which are very helpful.
HIEs: Specialize, Adapt & Survive, CMIO Magazine. From the article, a few interesting HIE examples:
- “The Nebraska Health Information Initiative (NeHII) is planning for a self-sustaining future. NeHII charges a monthly license fee from data providers based on number of beds. Fees range from $1,500 per month for small critical access hospitals up to $12,000 per month for organizations with 500-plus beds, according to Deb Bass, executive director for NeHII.”
- “The Indianapolis-based nonprofit now exchanges lab results, patient demographics and visit information, radiology study results, and information on dictated and transcribed summaries such as discharge notes. IHIE processes approximately 2.5 million results a day via HL7. Data are stored for roughly 12 million patients with close to 4 billion structured results available online, according to Overhage.”
Letting the Data Flow, Part One, The Health Care Blog. From John Moore’s post on his attendance at the National Regional Extension Centers (REC) and Health Information Exchange (HIE) Summit, a few key points:
- “HIEs are seen as the aggregator of data for future quality assessments and gain insight on what is truly effective.”
- “…nowhere did I see or hear presentations from organizations that have already established private, enterprise HIEs in their communities. This takes me back to a conversation I had with a large IDN in the midwest that had already worked with competing IDNs and community hospitals to establish a local, albeit private, HIE. She had absolutely no desire to be a part of a statewide initiative that planned to charge her organization ~$50K/yr for something they already had (and likely far better than the one the State was planning).”
- “The need for data liquidity is apparent but if we do not address the core needs and issues at the community level and engaged healthcare business in the discussion, meetings such as this will be a lot of talk, but talk that is disconnected from the business of healthcare and thus of little relevance.”
2010 Survey on Health Information Exchange, eHealth Initiative. From the 2010 Key Findings:
- The top 3 functionalities being provided by the initiatives:
- Connectivity to electronic health records
- Results Delivery
- Health Summaries for continuity of care
- The top 5 types of data exchanged by the initiatives:
- Laboratory Results
- Medication Data
- Outpatient laboratory results
- Allergy Info
- Emergency Department episodes/discharge summaries
- The top 3 services offered by the state designated entities:
- Electronic prescribing and refill requests
- Prescription fill status and/or medication fill history
- Electronic eligibility and claims transactions
Each of these resources contain interesting perspectives on what is happening, or needs to happen, with HIEs. We will continue to monitor and highlight HIE initiatives and insights as they continue to develop.
Join the conversation with any HIE experiences you may have. We welcome your input.
