The leading Northern California non-profit health system Sutter Health has announced that over the summer, it will begin deploying a health information exchange (HIE) system aimed at eventually allowing its doctors and hospitals to securely share clinical information with other providers, both inside and outside its network of care.

Sutter Health’s Epic electronic health record (EHR) already connects five of its medical foundations and 17 of its hospital campuses. By 2015, when its Epic rollout is complete, its whole system should be connected. However, patients do not get all of their care within Sutter Health, and that is why a HIE is needed.   

Sutter Health is working with Orion Health to build and deploy its HIE. The Orion Health Collaborative Care care management solution already forms the information technology foundation for the non-profit Inland Empire HIE, which expects to cover at least 10 million California patients by the end of this year. 

“An HIE system will allow us to securely exchange up-to-date patient information with Sutter Health clinicians as well as those not affiliated with our organization, providing us with complete, secure 360-degree views of patients’ care and health histories, wherever and whenever it’s needed,” said Chris Jaeger, M.D., Sutter Health’s chief medical information officer, in a press release. “Improved delivery of reliable information can be especially important in emergencies—when every second counts for patients in distress.”

Plans call for first creating basic data integration with the Sutter EHR and then testing the system to ensure the secure and accurate sending and receiving of information through the system. Sutter Health did not give a final date for when the system would be completely deployed.