January 24, 2012 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
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In this podcast HCI Associate Editor Jennifer Prestigiacomo speaks with Brian Yeaman, M.D., CMIO of Norman Regional Health System and a board certified Family Medicine physician. Yeaman speaks about how he uses SMRTNet, a publicly-owned network of affiliated HIEs spanning the state of Oklahoma that was developed in 2005. SMRTNet is currently connected to more than 27 million records from 45 unique contributing facilities, covering more than 2.6 million lives and 7 million encounters. SMRTNet incorporates clinics, hospitals and lab data into one location, and the network was identified by the National eHealth Collaborative as one of twelve national HIE leaders. During the podcast, Yeaman speaks about why SMRTNet is not seeking out payer-involvement just yet.
January 23, 2012 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
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To create a truly sustainable health information exchange (HIE), those in the industry say that, for starters, the exchange must be built on a solid use case. No one can attest to this more than Brian Yeaman, M.D., a family medicine physician and CMIO of 324-bed Norman Regional Health System (Oklahoma City). Yeaman is one of the many clinicians that uses SMRTNet, a publicly-owned network of affiliated HIEs spanning the state of Oklahoma that was developed in 2005.
January 20, 2012
news
A recent poll of healthcare executives from Beacon Partners, a Weymouth, Mass.-based healthcare management consulting firm, highlights the benefits and limitations of health information exchanges (HIEs).
January 19, 2012 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
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The Iowa Health Information Network (IHIN) plans to begin its messaging pilot in July 2012, with full implementation planned by December 2012. This will be the first HIE activity of its kind in the state. Iowa e-Health Executive Director Kim Norby says that among the core components and services of the messaging pilot will be access, authentication, and authorization controls, as well as 24/7 customer support. IHIN secure messaging, based on Direct standards, will support all items including a provider directory, certificates, and HISP to HISP transport, he adds.
January 12, 2012 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
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In recent years, the number of live private health information exchanges (HIEs) has been mushrooming and outpacing that of the public sector. In both sectors, organizations must reach a consensus among stakeholders over a variety of issues like governance, data sharing agreements, and so forth. A relatively new HIE, Carolina eHealth Alliance (CeHA), a Charleston, S.C.-based private HIE, is a good example of how competing systems can collaborate on patient care. With that said, CeHA has had to make some concessions in the face of competition.
September 1, 2011 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
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Sharing clinical information among providers and payers via health information exchanges (HIEs) can improve quality at the point of care and help drive down costs. This salient message, as well as others, were delivered at an eHealth Initiative (eHI) webinar “Bridging the Gap between Providers and Payors” on Monday, which brought the two groups together to talk about how best to collaborate on patient care and healthcare utilization.
September 1, 2011 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
blog
John D. Halamka, M.D. wrote an excellent article recently in Mass Device about how Steve Jobs principles can be applied to health information exchange in Massachusetts. When Apple had lost market share to Microsoft in the ’90s, Jobs laid out a five-fold plan to get his company on better footing.
February 20, 2011 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
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Even though “no one has a single answer” for health information exchange (HIE) sustainability, said Claudia Williams, director of the State Health Information Exchange Program at HHS, the panelists of the HIE Financial Sustainability Symposia at the HIMSS11 Conference in Orlando on February 20 agreed that HIEs must deliver value at every stage and that health plans must take their place at the stakeholder table.
February 20, 2011 Mark Hagland
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As part of the morning program Sunday at the CHIME CIO Forum, three healthcare IT leaders discussed a wide range of issues currently facing health information exchange (HIE) development industry-wide, in front of an assembled audience of about 520 healthcare IT executives gathered together at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, by the Ann Arbor, Mich.-based College of Health Information Management Executives (CHIME). Gretchen Tegethoff, CIO of The George Washington University Hospital in Washington, D.C., led a panel discussion with Indranil (Neal) Ganguly, vice president and CIO, CentraState Health System, Freehold, N.J., and John Mattison, M.D., chief medical information officer at the Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente system.
January 24, 2011 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
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Keystone Health Information Exchange (KeyHIE) Director Jim Younkin is excited about the many grant initiatives his organization is working on, but probably is most eager to start one that hasn’t even been awarded yet. KeyHIE, the health information exchange that interconnects the Danville-based Geisinger Health System and five other regional northeast Pennsylvania hospitals—Community Medical Center (Scranton), Evangelical Community Hospital (Lewisburg), Mid-Valley Hospital (Peckville), Moses Taylor Hospital (Scranton), and Shamokin Area Community Hospital (Coal Township)—is waiting to hear about grant funding for its long-term care project offered by the Office of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology (ONC) through the State Health Information Exchange Cooperative Agreement Program.
December 20, 2010 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
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With any adoption curve, the first third is always the most important, according to David Groves, executive director of the Cincinnati-based HealthBridge Tri-State Regional Extension Center (REC). His REC is successfully a third of the way in achieving its goal of 1,750 primary care physicians outfitted with EHRs. The HealthBridge Tri-State REC serves the communities of southwestern Ohio, northern and northeastern Kentucky, and southeastern Indiana. In September the organization was awarded a $13.8 million Beacon Community Cooperative Agreement Program by the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) to focus on the area’s diabetic and child asthma populations. Groves spoke with HCI Associate Editor Jennifer Prestigiacomo about sustainability issues with the REC and the health information exchange, as well as what he learned at last week’s grant awardees conference.
November 1, 2010 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
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Regional extension centers (RECs) are now mostly in the early stages of planning their organizations and facilitating physician adoption of electronic health records (EHRs). However, two New York RECs are frontrunners in this space and use collaboration to conquer the complexities of meaningful use.
