Things are looking up for healtheConnect Alaska, which has a new state contract to expand services and use cases, a partnership with CRISP Shared Services, and a rapidly growing membership roster. In an interview with Healthcare Innovation, Gene Quinn, M.D., chair of the healtheConnect board, spoke about the progress they are making.
Quinn, who is director of quality and population health at the Alaska Heart & Vascular Institute, said the new contract with the state reaffirms the organization’s status as the state's neutral nonprofit health information exchange and a trusted source for that data. “It also allows us to continue our building of stakeholder relationships, reaching out to other organizations, some of which include Tribal organizations that tend to operate in more rural areas,” he said. “It will allow us to address more use cases as well, especially as we transition toward being at a health data utility to continue to support the Medicaid program, as well as provider groups that are working on value-based care and population health.”
The new contract with the state also will allow healtheConnect to reach more regions where access to quality care has been historically limited, such as underserved rural and urban Alaskan communities.
The HIE recently experienced a growth spurt, more than doubling its user base from 2021 to 2022. The number of organizations increased 40 percent during that time. “I think we can give the pandemic a little bit of credit for that,” Quinn said. “It's hard to say that there are silver linings with COVID. But one of the things that happened was that we all realized that we're a little bit more connected than we thought we were. Our healthcare system is a team sport and is not conducive to silos.”
In addition to being on an upward trajectory over the past three years in terms of engaging stakeholders, the HIE has become an affiliate of CRISP Shared Services (CSS), which is a nonprofit support organization that provides technology infrastructure and other core services to HIEs across the country. CSS says it assists member organizations in achieving economies of scale, pooling innovation efforts and implementing best practices while maintaining their own governance. Additional member affiliates of CSS currently include CRISP Maryland, CRISP DC and West Virginia Health Information Network. CSS also supports Connie, Connecticut’s official HIE.
“That allowed our large geographic but small population state to have the same type of best technology as a 4 million-person state when we only have 750,000,” Quinn explained. “Being an affiliate, we have our own local control and local governance, so we can do what's best for Alaska. That is really important to Alaskans, so that really resonated with us. It also helped that they're on the same technology backbone of Audacious Inquiry as we were, so that made the transition relatively easy. We have made this transition away from being a tech company where we are building all of our own tech.Now that we share that tech stack, we can focus on outreach use cases, and being able to meet our community needs.”
One fairly recent development has been the sharing of behavioral health data. Quinn said that like other health issues, behavioral health issues do not exist in silos. “People who have medical problems often have behavioral health issues and people with behavioral health issues have medical problems as well. And each of those respective practitioners can benefit from knowing about those other conditions. We have successfully deployed the HIE in helping behavioral health practitioners both in the office setting, and also in some crisis settings, get health data through the HIE on other comorbid conditions for their clients. That's been a really big breakthrough for us.”
Quinn also works as chief medical officer for a local clinically integrated network called Envoy Integrated Health, which has partnered with the Department of Health and healtheConnect Alaska to enable the HIE to do electronic referrals to the tobacco quit line with one click in the EHR. “This has not only streamlined the administrative parts, but it's actually led to a significant increase in referrals to the tobacco quit line,” he said. “Tobacco is a significant cause of mortality and morbidity in our state, so I'm excited about that.”
Despite the progress, Quinn said, there is always more to do. For one, healtheConnect Alaska is in the process of interviewing for a permanent executive director. Also, there are still a few Alaska hospitals that have yet to join the HIE. “We're hoping that this new contract with the state will inspire them to join the network,” he said.
