Only a few days after health IT interoperability organizations in Michigan announced a merger, Indiana Health Information Exchange (IHIE) and Michiana Health Information Network (MHIN), two Indiana HIEs, announced they plan to consolidate on Jan. 1, 2020.
Indiana’s third HIE, HealthLINC based in Bloomington, is also part of this statewide consolidation. HealthLINC began transitioning its customers to IHIE in mid-2019. The consolidation of the respective customer bases of Indiana’s three health information exchanges results in one HIE serving nearly all the state.
Indianapolis-based IHIE pointed to the changing national landscape of health IT. There has been a growing trend of consolidating HIEs to produce stronger value in overlapping markets and more dollars and resources dedicated to innovations that benefit customers.
In the case of the Michigan organizations uniting, they mentioned the need to be more strategically aligned for ongoing national efforts and regulations being announced, such as the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA).
“The evolution of national interoperability is driving the need for HIEs to adapt, but also creating opportunities for new HIE value propositions,” said John Kansky, IHIE’s president and CEO, in a prepared statement. “To deliver this new value, HIEs need to make significant investments and operate on a larger scale.”
All MHIN employees will become IHIE employees at the beginning of the new year, uniting the two organizations. IHIE will have offices in both Indianapolis and South Bend.
Founded in 2004, IHIE makes information available to approximately 50,000 healthcare providers in Indiana and neighboring states.
