The eHealth Initiative has capped four years of work on community health information exchanges (HIEs) with the publication of a Value and Sustainability Model (VSM) that includes four tools to help guide such organizations from creation to success.
The tools assist with assessing market readiness, estimating the value of an exchange, estimating risk and creating a business plan.
Janet Marchibroda, the eHealth Initiative’s chief executive officer, said the VSM and tools provide a solution to a critical need.
“Our work in the HIE field revealed that sustainable business-model development is one of the greatest HIE challenges,” she said. The VSM “offers a solution that is based squarely on the lessons of those who have gone before, customized to each community’s needs.”
In a research report published with the VSM, the eHealth Initiative pointed out that health information organizations don’t have access to the same kind of start-up funding that other businesses do because no pricing mechanisms exist for what they do.
To the extent that such organizations have made business cases, the report states, they have focused on transaction efficiencies that address stakeholder interests, typically resulting in a market that yields only modest revenues.
However, successful exchanges have devised micro-economic stimuli that attract provider participation. That approach reduces administrative costs, and as a result, providers have achieved internal savings that more than offset the costs of participating in the exchange.
The report lists four observations about health information exchanges:
Stakeholder goodwill, or social capital, is the foundation.
Value in human resources enables the exchange.
Value in functionality might evolve dynamically over time.
Exchanges grow more valuable as they become agents of market transformation.
The report also outlines two models for successful exchanges: a corporation custom-built for a community or a franchise that mirrors another successful exchange.
From the battlefield to the home front: Managing medical data
Government Health IT presents Col. Claude Hines Jr., program manager for the Defense Health Information Management System, in this recent InSight eSeminar. Col. Hines discusses the health information technology and tactical challenges faced by the military medical community in Iraq, Afghanistan and other areas of conflict. In doing so, he describes the current information technology solutions for transferring clinical data between battlefield care givers to health care personnel at military treatment facilities worldwide.
