The Indiana Health Information Exchange (IHIE) has obtained federal funding to expand into the state’s third-largest city with the aim of serving Medicaid patients there.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services awarded the state a $1.3 million Medicaid Transformation grant. Indiana’s Family and Social Services Administration, the grant recipient, selected IHIE to manage the Evansville pilot.
Dr. Jeff Wells, director of the state’s Office of Medicaid and Policy Planning, said the significance of the pilot lies in the state’s movement to a value-driven health care model. He noted that the current system pays for the number of patients seen and treatments delivered.
“We are looking to change this by shifting the emphasis to quality,” Wells said. “Disease management would be just one example. As a result of using a health information exchange, physicians will now be able to better track how patients are doing over time. Physicians may be able to ensure patients are being seen regularly and are receiving proper evidence-based care, including screenings.”
IHIE will pull together various data sources for the Evansville pilot. Initially, the exchange will focus on hospital and laboratory test results, radiology reports and other transcribed reports, said Dr. J. Marc Overhage, president and chief executive officer at IHIE and director of medical informatics at the Regenstrief Institute.
The institute, an Indianapolis-based nonprofit medical research organization, partners with IHIE.
Data from large physician-groups will be included. The exchange also plans to “bring along interfaces to claims data” from major payers, Overhage said. In addition, interfaces to national laboratories and pharmacy data aggregators are on the agenda.
Separate data vaults will be set up to store data from each source, whether a hospital, payer or other entity. When a patient visits a provider, the system will determine where the patient’s data resides and retrieve it.
“The data stays in the separate vaults and it is only pulled together at the moment it is needed,” Overhage said.
IHIE will also provide a Web-based application, which will let physicians view patient data. Overhage likened the application to a lightweight electronic medical record system. He said the system will be used at the point of patient care — emergency departments or ambulatory practices, for example.
Physicians will also have the option of receiving a printed summary of patient data. Upon arrival at a provider, patients will swipe a card that confirms Medicaid eligibility. That action will trigger the printing of a data summary.
Wells said Evansville was selected for the pilot because the county health department, two hospital systems and a clinic already were developing a regional HIE. He said the exchange is expected to be operational within two years.
The Evansville pilot marks IHIE’s first venture into southern Indiana. The exchange already covers Indianapolis and central Indiana, Crawfordsville west of Indianapolis, Lafayette/West Lafayette north of Indianapolis, Kokomo in north-central Indiana, and northwest Indiana –- altogether, about 30 percent of the state's patient population.
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.
