The Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) of Health Information Technology has awarded six more contracts to health systems and health information exchanges for participation in this year’s work to develop a nationwide health information network.
The organizations, which together will receive about $600,000, join more than a dozen other health organizations in the trial implementation phase of NHIN. The project is scheduled to demonstrate live exchange of health records Sept. 28.
That demonstration will not use real health records because of concerns about accidental release of information. The remainder of this year will be devoted to preparations for exchange of actual records for use in health care in 2009.
The nine organizations that won ONC contracts earlier, a group of federal agencies that use health records, and the new organizations are working collaboratively to resolve the technical, security and operational issues associated with large-scale health information exchange.
Dr. John Loonsk, director of ONC’s Office of Interoperability and Standards, told a conference audience in Dallas today that the project participants represent a variety of organizations and missions. “We are embracing them all in the NHIN,” he said.
In September, the organizations will demonstrate services for patient look-up and information retrieval; secure information routing and delivery; providing data for population health uses; and consumer-managed access to appropriate information. In the meantime, “we need to do very detailed technical testing to make sure this works,” Loonsk said.
Winners of the new contracts — technically, cooperative agreements — are:
--HealthLINC/Bloomington Hospital, an e-health collaborative that serves a 10-county area in South-Central Indiana.
--Ohio’s Cleveland Clinic, a medical system with 5.3 million patients. A leader in using e-health records, it includes 10 Cleveland-area hospitals, 13 clinics in the same region and a hospital in Florida.
--The Community Health Information Collaborative, a partnership among hospitals, clinics, long-term care facilities, tribal health facilities, higher education and public health departments in a rural, 18-county region of Minnesota.
--HealthBridge of Cincinnati, perhaps the country’s oldest health information exchange. It serves a tri-state region connecting 24 hospitals and health systems, 17 local health departments, two national and multiple local laboratories, radiology and diagnostic centers, doctors’ offices, community health centers, and nursing homes.
--Kaiser Permanente, the country’s largest private integrated health care delivery organization, with more than 8.7 million members in 10 states and the District of Columbia.
--Wright State University/HealthLink regional health information organization, in West-Central Ohio. It links hospitals, providers, Medicaid-managed care, labs, state and local public health services, public schools, social services, and safety net providers.
Government Health IT presents Rick Friedman, director of the division of state systems for the Center for Medicaid and State Operations with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in this recent eSeminar regarding how the federal Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services is partnering with state Medicaid and health and human services officials to bring Medicaid into the digital age. Paul McCloskey, Government Health IT editor, moderates.
