Following in the footsteps of this year Civitas Networks for Health 2022 Annual Conference, a partnership with DirectTrust Summit, executives from two health information exchanges shared with IT news about healthcare views on their organization’s role as public health utilities, interoperability challenges, pandemic successes, and trends shaping the future for HIE.
Our conversation featured commentary from Erica Galvez, CEO of Manifest MedEx, the largest HIE in California, and Kyle Russell, CEO of Virginia Health Information, the nonprofit that runs the regulatory program urgent care coordination, commonwealth HIE, all payer claims database and other data collection systems.
Q. How can health information exchanges serve as public health utilities?
RUSSELL: To truly survive the word “data utility”, the HIE must be structured with a strong public accountability mechanism. They must serve the entire community, not just select groups.
The concept of a health data utility actually formalizes the wide range of functionality that many HIEs already offer. Services such as complex data binding, development of standards for data exchange, and patient risk profiling have been key components of the HIE for many years and translated into the HDU concept.
GALVEZ: The Health Data Network provides a valuable public health data infrastructure by connecting, matching, aggregating, deduplication, and sharing health information in a vast ecosystem of health data. organizations in a timely manner.
In some cases, the HIE provides the infrastructure to track reportable laboratory results, immunizations, and syndrome surveillance. In other cases, HIEs provide more complete and timely information for critical public health functions such as case management and contact tracing to prevent transmission of infectious diseases.
Q. What data and interoperability challenges face HIE today?
RUSSELL: Strong advocates for enhanced interoperability for healthcare data exchange have made great strides over the past few years, but challenges remain that HIE must continue to address.
A major national issue is concern about the sharing of substance use disorder treatment data in accordance with 42 CFR Part 2 regulation. Unduly cautious interpretations of these rules may limits interoperability and impedes data sharing that will ultimately lead to better coordination of care for patients.
“There is growing recognition that provider data-sharing incentives can improve the quality of data shared in states where participation in the HIE is not mandatory.”
Erica Galvez, Manifest MedEx
Addressing the lack of exchange standards for social determinants of health data is also something we expect to change dramatically over the next few years.
GALVEZ: There are a lot of interesting discoveries around SDOH data, such as housing, food, education, and environmental risk factors. At Manifest MedEx, we are particularly interested in closing the demographic information gap through our partnership with PointClickCare’s HIE Encounter Notification Service (ENS) from Audacious Inquiry, a company PointClickCare company.
Knowing the basics like a patient’s age, race, ethnicity, and the language they speak at home is great for providing reliable care. and promote equity in health.
Q. What are some of the successes that have been achieved during COVID-19 in expanding the role of HIE?
RUSSELL: HIE is built to thrive in environments where rapid action is required. When the COVID-19 pandemic began, HIE was very involved in enabling real-time notification of positive, pending, and negative laboratory results for COVID-19.
These announcements are important to reduce duplicate laboratory tests, increase the ability of healthcare organizations to protect their workforce from COVID-19 transmission, and have informed conversations with their patients.
Once this is up and running for COVID-19, HIE can replicate it for additional lab results, such as multidrug resistant organisms (MDRO). The timeliness with which HIE is able to respond, in some cases at no additional cost to users, has confirmed how effectively HIE supports their community through their platform.
For VHI, this capability is provided through our partnership with the PointClickCare care partnership network from Collective Medical, a PointClickCare company.
GALVEZ: COVID quickly exposed the most fundamental vulnerabilities in the health sector’s data infrastructure, especially for the public health system, vulnerable communities, and underserved populations. It has rekindled conversations about the work HIE has led over the past decade to connect and share health information between providers, health plans and public agencies.
HIE-supported data exchange and aggregation helps us better understand and manage pandemics in real time, proactively reach those most at risk, track interventions like vaccines and measure the results. This is an essential utility for current and future public health.
Q. What are some of the trends you see coming for HIE?
RUSSELL: At the forefront is SDOH data integration. HIE is actively supporting connectivity to SDOH data sources and technology platforms to deliver information to healthcare providers in real time and in clinical workflows allowing them to provides a more holistic approach to patient care.
This type of HIE and SDOH partnership also allows community-based organizations to leverage established technology and regulatory frameworks.
HIE’s reliable data exchange shares information much faster than the manual process, and that makes it possible for them to help customers’ suppliers much faster. There has also been a significant increase in multi-state and regional HIE partnerships to exchange data and share common technology solutions. This trend will continue to accelerate in the near future.
GALVEZ: Manifest MedEx and other HIEs are rapidly improving capabilities that go far beyond raw data exchange. For example, we are providing greater value to network participants by reducing the burden of HEDIS reporting with NCQA validated data. We are also simplifying risk adjustment for health plans by extracting and sharing clinical chart notes.
Finally, there is growing recognition that provider data-sharing incentives can improve the quality of data shared in states where HIE participation is not mandatory. These incentives play an important role in helping HIE expand their network to support a variety of Medicaid initiatives that advance equity of health and inclusive care.
Twitter: @SiwickiHealthIT
Email the writer: [email protected]
Healthcare IT News is a publication of HIMSS Media.
