2016 Strategic HIE Collaborative (SHIEC) Key Takeaways, Part One

We had the privilege to participate in the best conference of the year, the 2016 Strategic HIE Collaborative (SHIEC) Annual Conference. It is really exciting to see this important organization reach critical mass. During the opening session, Dick Thompson, SHIEC Executive Director and CEO, reported that membership grew to 41 HIE members, up from 26 last year. Conference attendance for 2016 was 250 registered attendees this year, an increase of almost 70%. Well done.

As the team at Zen Healthcare IT reflected this week on the conference, we thought it would be valuable to share what we believe are three interesting takeaways.

#1 – There is more than one way to implement a successful Patient Centered Data Home^TM

It is exciting to see the early progress made in exchanging data (like an ADT alert) between Health Information Exchanges, when patient’s travel outside their home base. Communities are using a variety of approaches to facilitate that exchange, from leveraging existing technology and standards (such as the IHE/eHealth Exchange – XCA query), to standing up new platforms that provide a user friendly UI to manage the cross community connections.

For those of you who missed the session going into the details, the idea is pretty simple. Using the patient’s home zip code information, identify if the patient is associated with an HIE “back home” – a Patient Centered Data Home^TM (PCDH). Then do some querying and determine whether to send an ADT alert to the home HIE. From there, the workflow varies by HIE but the result is the same. The medical home of the patient now knows that a care event occurred, even though it happened in a different HIE service area. In most cases, a detailed clinical summary document of the visit can be viewed or retrieved.

Of course, Patient Centered Data Home efforts start with aligning consent and data sharing models. The 3 PCDH pilots in the West (Western Colorado, Arizona, Utah), Southwest (Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas) and the Midwest (Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky and Eastern Tennessee) prove that when trust alignment happens, there are various technology approaches that will work.

Patient Centered Data Home™ (PCDH) – An Overview of Pilots & Progress

• David Kendrick, MD, MPH, CEO, MyHealth Access Network
• Dick Thompson, Executive Director & CEO, QHN
• Keith Kelley, VP Solution Delivery, Indiana Health Information Exchange (IHIE)

A Technical Overview of Patient Centered Data Home

• Cody Johansen, HIE Services Manager, UHIN – Western Pilot
• Joe Walker, Strategic Initiatives, Privacy & Security Officer, MyHealth Access Network
• Dave Navarro, Chief Data Architect, Michiana Health Information Network (MHIN)

Update!

Congratulations to The Health Collaborative / SHIEC for their ONC award announced this week for The Heartland Pilot. Another Patient-Centered Data Model pilot project gets underway!

Let’s now look at the second takeaway from the conference.

#2 – HIE’s remain concerned about Commonwell and Carequality Initiatives

(go to next page)