One of the groups that the National Rural Health Resource Center (The Center) provides technical support to are Rural HIT Networks. The Center identified early on that many of the networks were either in the process of selecting a health information exchange (HIE), participating in an HIE, or needed to understand HIE. HIE (as a noun) is a rapidly evolving technology that all health care providers will need to understand, particularly in the context of meaningful use. The Center looked for tools that would assist networks in being involved in an HIE but were unable to find many good tools. Therefore, we partnered with HIELix, a company that consults with HIEs across the country, to develop an HIE toolkit that would be appropriate for the grantees that we support.
This toolkit is exciting because it fills a void that has not bee addressed when most folks talk about HIE (as a verb or noun!). For example, we had a number of questions about policies that were important to have in place when forming an HIE, so we put together a "Policy Matrix" that summarizes the necessary policies and provides links to samples that are available. In addition, there is a Privacy and Security Overview and Resource List that provides a "deep dive" into the issues of privacy and security when participating in an HIE.
Most of us feel comfortable that HIE can have a significant impact on patient care and communication to other providers, but we often need to justify the return on investment as well. The ROI Calculator uses referable studies to provide an estimate of the potential savings when an HIE is fully utilized. The feedback we have heard thus far has been very positive regarding this tool, and I encourage everyone who is thinking about participating in an HIE to go through this spreadsheet. If you are implementing an HIE, we are putting together a pricing model as well, but it is not ready for "prime time". Let us know if you have a need for this, or some ideas!
Other tools that are part of the toolkit are the HIE Direct Guide, which is designed to assist hospitals and providers in understanding and implementing Direct, and the First Considerations document, which discusses first steps in forming or joining an HIE. These are great resources for anyone who needs to understand Direct or is joining an HIE. They are written with as little "techno speak" as possible!
Take a look at these resources, give us feedback, ask us questions, and help us improve them! We are excited about these tools and hope they will help hospitals, clinics, long-term care, homecare, and other providers. With meaningful use Stage 2 starting in just a few weeks, HIE participation will increase and we need to move quickly. Besides Stage 2, better communication between providers is so important in patient safety and quality of care that we need to use HIE (noun) to improve our processes for HIE (verb).
Oh, and sorry for the grammar confusion!
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