Michigan state officials announced Tuesday the formation of a new HIE, the Upper Peninsula Health Information Exchange (UPHIE), which will serve some 300,000 residents and span nearly one-third of the state.
The Upper Peninsula Health Care Network (UPHCN) sponsors the UPHIE, which officials say aims to improve the quality, delivery and efficiency of health care through the collaborative use of information technology and clinical data exchange.
[See also: Kansas HIE to dissolve, cede regulatory authority to state.]
UPHIE will facilitate exchange with some 900 UPHCN medical and ancillary providers, with the initial participants of the health information exchange (HIE) being primarily hospitals and ambulatory care centers, officials say.
UPHIE will tap Nashville, Tenn.-based Informatics Corporation of America (ICA) for the HIE infrastructure, which includes Direct messaging capabilities, standards-based secure clinical communications, data exchange and patient-provider portals.
The platform “will enable UPHIE to provide a widely spread, largely rural population in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan with the tools to improve quality of care while protecting privacy, sharing costs among stakeholders, and minimizing barriers to provider participation,” said David Jahn, president of UPHCN and chief executive officer at War Memorial Hospital. “The aggregation of clinical patient information from our numerous hospitals, and then using that information to provide our physicians with longitudinal health records, will aid in ensuring that vital clinical information is always available when and where it's needed."
[See also: Big Sky country HIE has big ideas for its data.]
"The Upper Peninsula is largely rural in nature,” and “has a rich history of collaboration among facilities, physicians, ancillary providers and payers,” said Paula Johnson, director of enterprise business systems at UPHCN. “The implementation of UPHIE will enable us to better tie together the widespread population, ultimately helping providers improve care coordination and better integrate transitions of care."
