At the 2013 California Stakeholder Health Information Exchange Summit last month in Sacramento, panelists discussed the new programs and networks that health information exchange (HIE) leaders have been working to set up throughout the state.
"We are here to change the culture," said Pamela Lane, the deputy secretary for Health Information Exchange at the California Health and Human Services Agency in her keynote address. "We are trying to change the culture of treating illness to a culture where we create wellness. We will still be treating illness, it’s part of our world, but it’s truly that creating of wellness that we hope to have in the year ahead.
Another keynote speaker at the event was Kenneth Kizer, the director of the UC Davis Institute for Population Health Improvement (IPHI), who described a new program launched by IPHI’s California Health eQuality (CHeQ) program.
The $1 million Rural Health Information Exchange Incentive Program will help doctors, clinics and hospitals in rural California implement HIE technologies. Doctors in these areas will be allowed a choice between five HIE providers to keep electronic records of their patients, which Kizer said will help prevent duplicate tests, incompatible medications and harmful drug interactions.
"The Rural HIE Incentive Program leverages a new, more cost-effective model for enabling exchange in rural communities," Kizer said in his address.
The CHeQ-designated rural HIE service providers are Axesson based in Santa Cruz, Informatics Corporation of America based in Nashville, Tenn., Inland Empire Health Information Exchanged based in Riverside, Orange County Partnership RHIO in Orange and Redwood MedNet based in Ukiah.
Also discussed at the summit was how a small group of HIE leaders have been meeting since the spring to establish the California Association of Health Information Exchanges (CAHIE).
President and COO of Health Share Bay Area and co-chair of CalOHII Policy Steering Committee David Minch explained that the CAHIE’s mission is to establish self-governance for data exchange that allows the group to share information with each other. Most of the members support the federal Data Use and Reciprocal Support Agreement (DURSA), which facilitates HIE among health care organization and federal agencies.
"We need to start focusing on the benefit that data can provide to patients," Minch said, "and help consumers understand that a small security risk is worth taking in exchange for vastly improved and more affordable medical care."
The participants of CAHIE are currently the UC Davis Health System, Kaiser Permanente, Sutter Health, Inland Empire HIE, HealthShare Bay Area, Dignity Health, Redwood MedNet, Orange County PRHIO, Santa Cruz Health Information Exchange, NCHIN, San Diego Beacon HIE and the Department of Veterans Affairs.
"We are at the vanguard right now of changing the health care system from an information poor culture to one where information is rich, available, and useable," Lane said in her keynote address. "We’re moving from a culture of autonomy, silence, and lack of accountability and in some cases to downright guesswork, to one that is interdependent, information rich, and accountable."
