HIE progress: Standstill or ready to rocket?
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According to an article published in Journal of the American Health Information Management Association, progress on state-level HIEs has been slow since the State Health Information Exchange Cooperative Agreement Program funneled $548 million to 56 states, territories and state-designated entity HIE startups in 2010. “Many of the HIEs are still developing their sustainability plans and preparing to launch, relying solely on the government grants that run out in just a few short years," according to the article.
Rather than wait for those state HIEs, some larger health systems have begun contracting with IT vendors to develop their own systems, according to the article.
“So many 'private HIEs' are popping up, industry analysts have begun to debate whether nonprofit regional and state HIEs have become obsolete before even taking root. Others warn that private HIEs—which may narrow their services according to margin and competitive advantage—will drain customers and resources necessary for the success of state HIEs, which aim to provide broader services and are intended to serve the greater good.”
Meanwhile, Claudia Williams, MS, director of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT’s (ONC) state HIE program, offered a positive review of the ONC’s progress on HIE during a webinar. “We're on the verge of turning the corner on HIE," she said. "The building blocks put in place by the HITECH Act help everyone see where exchange fits into the broader set of goals we all share. We've made incredible progress in a short amount of time. Information exchange should take off in 2012."
ONC’s approach to furthering information exchange includes several mantras. For example, government needs to be leveraged as a platform to create innovations for conditions of interoperability; HIE is not one-size-fits-all; and interoperability is a journey, not a destination. “We’re not going to be done this year or next year,” said Williams, adding that HIE will continue to evolve as users learn the best ways to achieve exchange.
The ability to share clinical data electronically is a critical challenge required to fix the healthcare system, according to a viewpoint report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
“The vision of complete patient information available across care delivery settings is compelling and central to a high-functioning healthcare system,” the authors wrote. “However, the vision is deceptively simple: there are enormous challenges to enabling clinical data to flow across organizations. These challenges are substantially greater than those associated with transitioning physicians and hospitals to EHRs.”
The most difficult challenge, perhaps, is convincing clinicians to demand these data and use them when available. “Physicians are accustomed to making clinical decisions with incomplete information, and the notion that they might be responsible for reviewing patient data from past encounters across all care settings is daunting.”
How is your organization facing HIE? Public or private? And, are your physicians tackling the fundamental changes to their ways of practicing medicine? Please share your experiences.
Beth Walsh
CMIO Editor
bwalsh@trimedmedia.com
Beth Walsh,
Editor
Editor Beth earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and master’s in health communication. She has worked in hospital, academic and publishing settings over the past 20 years. Beth joined TriMed in 2005, as editor of CMIO and Clinical Innovation + Technology. When not covering all things related to health IT, she spends time with her husband and three children.