Two state HIE pilot programs take flight

Providers and public health agencies in Minnesota and Rhode Island began exchanging health information using specifications developed by the Direct Project initiative, according to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC).The pilot demonstrations were launched less than a year after the inception of the Direct Project, a public-private partnership to develop web-based tools for transmitting patient data via electronic health information exchange (HIE), ONC officials stated during a press conference Feb. 1.

Hennepin County Medical Center, a Level 1 Adult and Pediatric Trauma Center in Minneapolis, began in mid-January to send immunization records to the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) via the Direct framework.

The Rhode Island Quality Institute (RIQI) is piloting direct provider-to-provider data exchange when patients are referred to specialists. RIQI is also leveraging Direct Project messaging to feed clinical information, with patient consent, from practice-based EHRs to the statewide HIE, currentcare, to improve quality by detecting gaps in care and making sure the full record is available to all care providers.

The Direct Project has brought together some 200 participants from more than 60 companies and other organizations, who worked together to assemble consensus standards that support secure exchange of basic clinical information and public health data. Now, pilot tests based on Direct Project specifications are under way, with formal adoption of the standards and wide availability for providers by 2012, according to the ONC.

Scalability is essential for primary care providers to participate in this type of data exchange, said Al Puerini Jr., MD, president and CEO of the Rhode Island Primary Care Physician Corporation, an independent practice association in Cranston, R.I.

“We developed a [primary-care-physician-oriented] EHR in 2003, and started developing interfaces with labs, radiology centers … then we had this nice EHR in our offices that had all this data, and what do we do with it? We couldn’t really exchange it with anybody,” he said. Other vendors were trying to build systems within their EHR platform, but they weren’t scalable. “Then along comes NHIN Direct. As soon as we saw the specs, we said ‘we want to be a part of it,’” said Puerini.

“Just this [past] Monday, we had the first transmission in the country that sent a referral with CCR from my office to a gastroenterologist office. It was encrypted, it was secure and it happened flawlessly. For us to accomplish that in our little sphere is just incredible.”

Other Direct Project pilot efforts to be launched this year include:

• A Tennessee effort with the Veteran's Administration, local hospitals and CareSpark to provide care to veterans and their families.
• A New York effort including clinicians in hospital and ambulatory care settings with MedAllies and EHR vendors.
• A Connecticut effort involving patients, hospitals, ambulatory care settings and a Federally Qualified Health Center with Medical Professional Services, a PHR and a major reference laboratory.
• An expansion of the VisionShare immunization data pilot to Oklahoma.
• A California rural care effort involving patients, hospitals and ambulatory care settings with Redwood MedNet.
• An effort in South Texas with a collaboration of hospitals, ambulatory care settings, public health and community health organizations to improve care to mothers with gestational diabetes and their newborns.

 
For more information about the Direct Project, please visit http://directproject.org.