Fact Sheet
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) awarded projects for supporting statewide data sharing and interoperability activities on a State or regional level aimed at improving the quality, safety, efficiency, and effectiveness of health care for patients and populations.
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Contents
Introduction
State and Regional HIE Projects
National Resource Center for HIT
More Information
Introduction
In 2004, the Agency for Healthcare
Research and Quality (AHRQ) awarded
"State and Regional Demonstrations
(SRDs) of Health Information
Exchange (HIE)" contracts to Colorado,
Indiana, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and
Utah. Delaware was added in 2005.
The 5-year project supports statewide
data sharing and interoperability
activities on a State or regional level
aimed at improving the quality, safety,
efficiency, and effectiveness of health
care for patients and populations. It is
expected that measurable improvements
in the quality, safety, efficiency, and/or
effectiveness of care will result from the
proposed data sharing and interoperability
measures.
The six States are developing a variety of
approaches with different technical,
business, and governance models. In
addition to requirements specific to
their individual contracts, each is
required to:
- Develop a novel exchange of lab and prescription drug data among unrelated entities.
- Conduct an analysis of the role of the Medicaid program.
- Provide for an evaluation of their project.
- Develop a sustainability model.
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State and Regional HIE Projects
The Colorado Health Information
Exchange (COHIE). COHIE includes
four University of Colorado Health
Sciences Center-affiliated institutions
and works with various institutions and
county-based initiatives in health
information technology (health IT) to
create a cohesive health IT strategy for
the State as a whole.
In 2006, COHIE
became part of the larger Colorado
Regional Health Information
Organization (CORHIO), a non-profit
organization with a similar mission.
COHIE's planned services include the
following kinds of information
exchange:
- Point of care (for patient and provider).
- Clinical messaging (provider to provider).
- Administrative (provider and payor).
- Population health/public health (provider, payer, and public health).
Delaware Health Information
Network (DHIN). In 2005, DHIN
was awarded an SRD contract to
facilitate their mission of developing a
statewide health information and
electronic data exchange. DHIN plans
to build a computerized network
through which a patient can consent to
have hospitals, labs, diagnostic facilities,
and insurers share access to their
personal health information.
The data
will "live" at its point of origin, as the
model does not include a repository or
database. Other services will include a
patient portal, a disease management/decision support module, audit trail and
billing functions, claims retrieval and
processing, and secure messaging/E-mail
to facilitate improved provider-to-provider
and patient-to-provider
communication.
Indiana Health Information Exchange
(IHIE). Building on the Indiana
Network for Patient Care created by the
Regenstrief Institute, the IHIE is a non-profit
organization that was created in
2004. IHIE defines its vision for use of
information technology as:
- Improve the quality of health care in the State of Indiana.
- Generate new research topics for the health research community.
- Be a model for other communities seeking to develop an HIE.
To attain this vision, IHIE will
concentrate its effort on creating an
electronic infrastructure in central
Indiana and then slowly develop the
infrastructure across the entire State.
IHIE is creating a rich, large-scale health
information exchange built on clinical
information standards, adding
additional data sources including
hospitals, laboratories, radiology centers,
payors, and others.
IHIE services
include a clinical messaging system.
Physicians have access from a single
source to laboratory, pathology,
radiology, and electrocardiogram
reports, transcriptions, and emergency
department (ED) and hospital
encounter information from all
participating central Indiana hospitals.
The Rhode Island Health IT Project.
Rhode Island Quality Institute (RIQI)
was designated by the Rhode Island
Department of Health to carry out the
SRD contract funded by AHRQ. RIQI
is a non-profit organization that was
founded in 2001 as a collaborative effort
among members of the health care
community to improve health care
quality, safety, and value in Rhode
Island.
The long-term goal of the project
is to provide an integrated statewide
personal health record for patients. The
AHRQ-funded initial phase of the HIE
project will focus on making electronic
laboratory and medication information
available to providers through the HIE.
Initial sharing priorities include
providing authorized clinical users access
to current and historical laboratory
information from three major
laboratories in the State (an integrated
delivery network, the State public health
laboratory, and a local private laboratory
chain) and medication histories from a
major pharmacy transaction network
and other medication information data
sharing providers as they are identified.
Tennessee: MidSouth eHealth
Alliance. To facilitate the development
of a community-wide information
system, the MidSouth eHealth Alliance
(MSeHA) was selected to receive
funding from AHRQ. MSeHA is a nonprofit
organization that seeks to improve
the health care system of Tennessee by
focusing on health care quality, safety,
and efficiency.
The goal of this initiative
is to implement health information
exchange in the counties surrounding
and including Memphis (Shelby
County) and to determine how this
exchange affects the health care system
in the region. After some preliminary
analysis, the project group targeted
hospitals and emergency departments in
its first phase. Tennessee has focused on
urban hospitals and large clinics and has
been operational in emergency
departments for 7 months.
They have
focused on exchanges between clinics,
prescription data, and sustainability. The
types of data exchanges include patient
demographic data; HL7 message types;
radiology results; respiratory care
treatment/results; pharmacy orders and
administration records; diagnosis codes;
institutional codes; and professional
billing codes.
Utah Health Information Network
(UHIN). A broad collection of health
care providers, insurers, and other
interested stakeholders make up the
UHIN. To accomplish the goals of
minimizing the costs of consumer
health care and improving overall health
care quality, UHIN functions as a secure
network through which health care
transactions pass.
The goal of UHIN is
to create an easy, low-cost system to
send lab results from hospitals,
physicians, and other health care
providers through an evolutionary
electronic data intercharge (EDI) path
that allows paper but encourages users
to migrate to formatted files.
These
exchanges can be used for both clinical
and administrative purposes. UHIN is
working to create provider-to-provider,
provider-to-public health, and provider-to-payor messaging through a hub
model with a central server.
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The National Resource Center for Health IT
AHRQ shares findings, tools, and
technical support through its National
Resource Center for Health IT (NRC).
The NRC provides direct technical
assistance and consulting services to
AHRQ projects involved in developing,
testing, and using health IT
applications, with a particular focus on
addressing challenges to health IT
implementation in rural and small
community settings.
In addition, the
NRC serves as the link between the
health care community at large and the
researchers and experts who are on the
front lines of health IT. As the central
repository for lessons learned from
AHRQ's health IT initiative, the NRC
encourages adoption of health IT by
disseminating the latest tools, best
practices, and research results from this
unique real-world laboratory.
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For More Information
For additional information on AHRQ
projects on health information
technology, please visit
http://www.healthit.ahrq.gov or contact
the health IT staff at
NRC-healthit@ahrq.gov.
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AHRQ Publication No. 07-P005
Current as of February 2007
Internet Citation:
Health Information Technology: State and Regional Demonstration Projects. Fact Sheet. AHRQ Publication No. 07-P005, February 2007. Rockville, MD: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. http://www.ahrq.gov/research/hitdemoproj.htm
540 Gaither Road Rockville, MD 20850