The San Diego Regional Health Information Exchange (SDRHIE), which is now being called the San Diego Health Connect, has added Scripps Health and Sharp HealthCare to participate in its exchange.
Scripps Health and Sharp HealthCare are the latest providers to join the regional exchange, and increase the potential number of patients it can serve from nearly 800,000 to more than 2.1 million. Other participants include Kaiser Permanente San Diego Medical Center, UC San Diego Health System, Rady Children’s Hospital San Diego, VA San Diego Healthcare System, Family Health Centers of San Diego, and 14 community clinics coordinated through the Council of Community Clinics.
“Sharing information about a patient at the point of care, with the patient’s consent, informs a physician’s decisions about testing and treatment, and it ultimately improves the quality of care,” San Diego Health Connect Executive Director Daniel J. Chavez said in a statement. “Our exchange uses nationally established protocols that adhere to the highest standards for privacy and data security.”
Recently, San Diego Health Connect officially evolved from the San Diego Beacon, the largest of the 17 Beacon Community projects that received a total of $250 million in three-year grants from the Health and Human Services Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). Funding for that project ended on Sept. 30. The regional health information exchange was one of the initial projects of that Beacon community.
“I am enthused about the long-awaited availability and growth of a secure, efficient network for exchanging patient health records across the San Diego healthcare community,” Robin Brown Jr., chief executive of Scripps Green Hospital and president of San Diego Health Connect’s board of directors, said in a statement.
Recently, San Diego Health Connect, the State of California Office of Health Information Integrity (OHII), and San Diego-based Humetrix announced a collaboration where patients in the regional HIE will be able to receive their health record directly on their smartphone through Humetrix's iBlueButton app.
