Health Information Exchange
Related Links
Key Facts
Introduction
Reports of ineffective and unsafe care, due in part to lack of up-to-date, coordinated patient information, are driving investments in information technology infrastructure. Health Information Exchange (HIE) demonstration projects are addressing these issues with the promise of increased efficiency, lower costs, and improved safety. HIEs establish the capability to electronically move clinical information between disparate healthcare information systems to facilitate access to and retrieval of clinical data.
Over the past two years, Blue Shield of California Foundation’s Health and Technology program invested $5.3 million in 15 HIEs of variable scopes. The projects range from planning and readiness assessment grants to the creation of HIEs with goals to exchange clinical and lab data between community clinics and emergency departments, enroll potential applicants in government programs or prescribe and track medications among multiple sites. Support for a statewide regional health information organization (RHIO) was provided, including a re-granting function to establish and supervise up to four HIEs.
Blue Shield of California Foundation undertook an evaluation of this portfolio of projects in the first quarter of 2008 to:
- Identify barriers, promising practices and lessons learned
- Benchmark the aggregated results
- Inform future grantmaking strategies
Results of this evaluation are summarized in the BSCF issue report, Building Relationships, Building Networks: Health Information Exchange.(PDF)
Other documents from the April 22, 2008 convening are presented below:
