Tenn.'s statewide HIE votes to shut down

The Health Information Partnership for Tennessee (HIPTN) is closing shop. Three years after the organization was formed to orchestrate statewide health information exchange (HIE) efforts, the HIPTN board voted on June 15 after meeting with state officials to begin winding down operations.

“Given the evolution of HIE across the country, HIPTN’s board of directors decided the best step was to allow the state to operate from a clean slate, ” HIPTN board chairman Reginald Coopwood, MD, said in a July 9 statement.

In 2009, HIPTN was formed and contracted by the state to build an intrastate infrastructure that would connect several regional health information organizations (RHIOs) already performing HIE activities in Tennessee. While HIPTN will soon cease to exist, three RHIOs will continue conducting HIE in the state. Those are the MidSouth eHealth Alliance, Middle Tennessee eHealth Connect and East Tennessee Health Information Network.

“The members of the HIPTN Board, and the organizations they represent, believe that secure health information exchange—in the form of electronic health records and other information—will benefit the quality of healthcare in Tennessee,” Coopwood said. “The board’s vision for a HIE network in Tennessee remains, and we hope that vision can be realized down the road.”