In an era of health information exchange consolidation, the HIEs in Maine, Rhode Island and Vermont have announced a collaboration aimed at advancing interstate interoperability to improve population health and patient care in and across each of the New England communities they serve.
Among other things, the nonprofit HealthInfoNet (Maine), Rhode Island Quality Institute (RIQI), and VITL (Vermont) say they will seek to leverage each HIE’s existing expertise and infrastructure to bolster the other HIEs’ offerings in their home states.
Each of the HIEs has experience in informing healthcare transformation activities through applications of data and technology that support clinical decision-making and public health planning efforts.
While the partnership formally unifies the organizations in pursuit of a singular vision for the New England region, they say it is precisely the distinctness of each organization’s strengths, experiences, and technologies that makes the alliance unique in comparison to other HIE consortiums in the country.
HealthInfoNet has developed and provided a suite of health information services to Maine’s healthcare community for more than 15 years. From critical integrations with national (e.g., eHealth Exchange) and statewide (e.g., Prescription Monitoring Program) data repositories, to facilitated exercises on advancing health equity and community information exchange, to the development of expanded quality measurement and predictive risk studies, the organization says it has established a track record of innovation and reliability over the years.
With over a decade of experience, RIQI has experience in managing patient consent and patient access to electronic health record systems, RIQI became the first HIE in the nation to develop an independent patient portal. The organization says it advances the notion of equitable healthcare for all Rhode Island communities by leveraging its rich data set to help its partners address health disparities by sharing data in ways that are meaningful and useful to all.
Known for its expertise in extracting meaningful health information from the complex and non-standard clinical documents that constitute a large portion of health records, VITL’s parsing capabilities continue to advance daily as the organization finalizes its implementation of a new, FHIR-native data repository. The result, says VITL, is more information actively supporting patient care, care coordination, health reform, and Vermont’s public health authority.
In partnering together, the organizations aim to accomplish three primary objectives: (1) improved interoperability, (2) expanded innovation and deployment of health information services for their communities, and (3) increased operational efficiencies.
By advancing health information interoperability, the HIEs say they hope to discover new ways of making patients’ critical data available to clinicians and their patients regardless of where in the region they receive care. The collaboration aspires to improve the quality, safety, and delivery of patient-centered care through seamless data-sharing, while also informing public health and broader healthcare transformation activities, especially by helping to surface information on patients who have been historically marginalized and/or who live in the most rural parts of the region.
Next, the collaborative will seek to leverage each HIE’s existing expertise and infrastructure to bolster the other HIEs’ offerings in their home states. This concept of shared services will allow the HIEs to limit the amount of financial and staff investment in redundant technologies and instead focus their energies on identifying new ways to convert and curate their diverse data assets into actionable insights. The agreement will enable the organizations to openly share their expertise with each other, with the aim of building collective capacity for health data sharing, to support better health across the region.
Finally, the collaboration expects to benefit from increased organizational efficiencies, most notably in the areas of shared staffing and joint purchasing. Leaders of the three HIE organizations – Shaun Alfreds (Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director, HealthInfoNet), Neil Sarkar, Ph.D., (President and Chief Executive Officer, RIQI), and Beth Anderson (President and Chief Executive Officer, VITL) – developed the vision for this collaboration over the last several months and look forward to developing the partnership in the years to come.
“This collaboration comes at a critical moment in healthcare. Coming out of the pandemic, interoperability efforts have shown enormous value. Our three states have innovated and persevered in support of patients and providers. Bringing our unique teams and skills together now will allow us to not only build upon previous successes, but magnify our impact on both public and private health reforms in our states and region,” said Alfreds in a statement.
