Inland Empire Health Information Exchange

Inland Empire Health Information Exchange is a non-profit, public-private regional Health Information Exchange (HIE) hybrid covering a population of more than 9 million people. It facilitates the electronic exchange of health information across 32 hospitals in 7 states. Today, Inland Empire HIE operates as a completely self-sustaining entity focused on facilitating coordination among providers, enhancing patient care and improving patient safety through the use of HIE and HIE-enabled eHealth tools.

LONG-TERM HIE: A SUSTAINABILITY-TECHNOLOGY CHALLENGE?

Inland Empire HIE’s founding healthcare organizations understood that improving the quality of care in its communities would require implementing strategy that would provide clinicians and patients with trusted, timely, and secure access to health information. With that in mind, Inland Empire HIE developed its operations under a sustainable, fee-based business model.

Once the organization created a subscription structure amenable to all members, it selected Orion HealthTM Collaborative Care, a comprehensive care management solution, to form the IT foundation for the HIE. Collaborative Care helps establish sustainable data exchange across Riverside, San Bernardino and other California counties and provides needed technology to access and securely share electronic patient health records.

Inland Empire HIE decided to partner with Orion Health because of its open healthcare technology platform that satisfies the needs of a wide range of users. Orion Health’s technology platform is flexible enough to attract new participants to drive growth and is extensible enough to provide long-term value for members focused on critical patient care initiatives.

Orion Health Collaborative Care is powered by Orion Health Rhapsody® Integration Engine, and includes Orion Health Clinical Data Repository, Orion Health Clinical Portal, as well as a suite of add-on modules designed to support organization- specific care initiatives. Along with the main modules, Inland Empire HIE also uses Enterprise Master Patient Index, Orion Health Patient Portal, Orion Health Healthcare Pathways and Orion Health Rhapsody Connect to help achieve all of its care initiatives. The stable, scalable solution complements Inland Empire HIE’s governance structure, sustainable subscription model and vision for long-term improvements to patient care.

THE RIGHT DATA EXCHANGE PLATFORM
Inland Empire HIE offers participants access to four key assets that drive successful, long-term data exchange:

1. Robust, scalable interoperability and data integrity with Rhapsody
Inland Empire HIE hospitals, health plans, specialty clinics, physician practices and other healthcare organizations use more than 18 different Electronic Health Record (EHR) solutions to exchange data with the central HIE. Rhapsody connects these systems to the central HIE, allows Inland Empire HIE to create the necessary application interfaces for public health reporting, and is scalable for onboarding new participants as Inland Empire HIE continues to expand.

2. Quick access to a standardized longitudinal patient record
Clinical Portal displays information to each individual clinician and provides easy-to-use navigation and graphical displays of relevant clinical data. Clinical workflow integration reduces clicks, driving user adoption, a critical component of Inland Empire HIE’s strategy to showcase the value of the HIE to its members and their clinicians.

3. Extensibility to anticipate the future needs of participants
Orion Health Collaborative Care add-on modules including Orion Health Business Intelligence, Healthcare Pathways and Rhapsody Connect, provide Inland Empire HIE with a range of options for providing technology beyond data exchange. Access to these additional capabilities allows Inland Empire HIE members to
do more with the data they generate, helps promote continued membership and enables long-term sustainability of the HIE.

4. Expertise on implementing health technology, managing patient populations and designing care programs
Orion Health’s global experience installing large-scale health IT systems, along with the insights gained from working closely with customers to design population health management programs, helps ensure that Inland Empire HIE has the right systems in place for its participants.

THE ROI OF THE HIE

Inland Empire HIE participants are seeing that the value of their membership extends above and beyond the data. For example, since implementing Collaborative Care, Inland Empire HIE has seen the following results:

• One public health laboratory saved over $30,000 because its participation in the HIE provides access to automated public health reporting capabilities that eliminate the need for the lab to build the interface on its own.
• One Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) connected to the exchange improved efficiency by utilizing the IEHIE connection to the California Immunization Registration.

EMBRACING ACOS AND ENGAGING PATIENTS

Inland Empire HIE is also actively forming additional partnerships with national organizations to bring its HIE services to bear on initiatives critical for improving patient care throughout the country. The National Rural ACO has contracted Inland Empire HIE to provide the HIE services to its rural members who, partnering under one entity, will be able to meet the Medicare and Medicaid requirements that govern ACOs. The partnership will bring 11,000 Medicare beneficiaries onto the HIE.

On the technology side, Inland Empire HIE is in the midst of rolling out the ONC Certified Orion Health Patient Portal, a secure, user friendly, web-based tool designed for patients and their authorized caregivers to access and manage patient records and improve communication with healthcare providers, anytime and anywhere. The solution will further aid participants as they seek Meaningful Use funding.

PROGRESS FOR INLAND EMPIRE HIE

Since its initial launch in April 2012, Inland Empire HIE has remained a self-sustaining organization focused on onboarding new participants and improving patient care. It has found value in using Orion Health technology to expand services and act as the public exchange for additional California counties and the enterprise exchange for private health systems.

• In May 2013, the exchange added San Joaquin County HIE to its active participants, bringing 696,000 San Joaquin residents into the organization.
• In August 2013, a partnership was formed with Prime HealthCare Services. The two organizations will link patient health information to all of Prime HealthCare Services’ hospitals across the country, bringing an additional 23 Hospitals across 7 states, including 14 in California, to IEHIE’s existing population of hospitals, providers and health plans.
• In February 2014, Central Valley HIE joined Inland Empire HIE.
• By the middle of 2014, Inland Empire HIE expects to cover 10 – 12 million patients.

INLAND EMPIRE HIE AT A GLANCE

Participants

• 162 member organizations

Governance

• 40 leadership group members
• 18 governing council members

Coverage

• 12,000 participant beds
• 2,200 participant physicians
• 9,200,000 participant lives

Source Orion Health