During the Office of Health Information Technology (OHIT) summit last week in the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI), Gov. Albert Bryan Jr. signed a letter of intent with Maryland-based CRISP Shared Services to participate in a data and interoperability pilot program that will lay the foundation for OHIT’s Health Information Exchange in the Territory.
In addition to Maryland’s CRISP HIE, CRISP Shared Services has grown to support CRISP DC, West Virginia Health Information Network, Virginia Health Information, Alaska’s healtheConnect and Connecticut’s Connie.
CRISP Shared Services will operate the USVI program using federal funds from a number of federal health agencies.
The pilot establishes the initial phase of the Territory’s Health Information Exchange (HIE), which will enable the sharing of health information among doctors’ offices, hospitals, federally qualified health centers, Department of Human Services Medicaid Division, Department of Health clinics, labs, radiology, identified community-based organizations and other healthcare entities.
“This Letter of Intent helps us finally test our ability to connect the healthcare and services-related data collected by our government to ensure the proper identification and efficient delivery of services and enhance our care to Virgin Islands residents,” said Bryan in a statement. “It will provide healthcare professionals, agencies, and community organizations with key information to help them make quicker decisions and provide better treatments, resulting in more timely care and more positive outcomes with less burden to the patients.”
During a trip to Washington, D.C. in February, Bryan had initial discussions about CRISP while meeting with D.C. Deputy Mayor of Health and Human Services and Director of the Department of Healthcare Wayne Turnage and other officials of the district’s public health agencies.
The discussions included best practices in the evolution of clinical data exchange to a more whole-person centered public health utility that supports the coordination and data exchange between physical, behavioral, social and human services.
Craig Behm, CEO of CRISP Shared Service, said his company is excited and ready to include the USVI in the pilot to build the initial technical integration for the federally supported priorities.
“The U.S. Virgin Islands are uniquely positioned to execute rapid modernization of their public health infrastructure. The engaged and thoughtful policymakers are already aligned with healthcare constituents, allowing for the development not only of basic interoperability through an HIE but also the full-scale development of a Health Data Utility (HDU),” Behm said in a statement.
OHIT Director Michelle M. Francis said the pilot program will build the necessary infrastructure to enable USVI healthcare institutions and key government agencies to prove out the minimum necessary data elements needed to create secure workflows between providers across the Territory’s health system.
“This pilot is a win for the USVI as it gives us a safe and funded space to make the first tangible, technical steps in building our HIE with a nationally recognized, pre-certified, innovative technology organization,” Francis said in a statement. “We have already begun the behind-the-scenes work of building out a governance structure, and along with creating local policies and agreements that comply with federal privacy and security standards to support the secure electronic exchange of health information, brings it all into focus and sets it into high gear now.”
