Three healthcare organizations are making strides in the adoption electronic health records and health information exchange (HIE) for the purpose of meaningful use, according to announcements by Surescripts, Humana, and Greenway Medical Technologies.
The first should prove significant in enabling the reach of HIE across the country. Surescripts, which first made a name for itself as the organization driving the adoption and capability of electronic prescribing (e-prescribing, eRx), has announced nearly a score of additions to its expanding health information network.
“The continued growth of the Surescripts network,” Surescripts President and CEO Harry Totonis explained in a public statement, “is driven by the fact that healthcare communities are realizing that electronic health information exchange is necessary to transform the way healthcare is delivered at the patient level and the increasingly rapid implementation of the federal government’s Meaningful Use guidelines.”
In total, the network has added 19 HIEs and health information service providers (HISPs):
• Cerner Corporation
• Chesapeake Regional Information System for Our Patients (CRISP)
• CliniSync
• Colorado Regional Health Information Organization (CORHIO)
• Great Lakes HIE
• Greater Rochester Regional Health Information Organization
• HealtheConnections RHIO Central NY
• HEALTHeLINK
• HealthInfoNet
• Illinois HIE (ILHIE)
• Informatics Corporation of America
• Iowa HIE
• Keystone Health Information Exchange (KeyHIE)
• MaxMD
• Michigan Health Connect
• Michigan Health Information Network Shared Services (MiHIN)
• Quest Diagnostics
• University of Pittsburgh Medical Center
• West Virginia Health Information Network
As a founding member of DirectTrust, Surescripts is a major player in establishing standards and best practices related to trust and security as they pertain to HIE and participation in its HIE network gives participants the ability to use Direct-compliant services, a component of HIE that the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) has emphasize as a stepping-stone to more robust and sophisticated exchange.
The second announcement was made jointly by Humana and Greenway. According to the payer and EHR vendor, the “strategic alliance” brings together the formers EHR Rewards program and the latter’s integrated EHR platform with Humana covering up to 85 percent of the cost for physicians in its network to adopt Greenways PrimeSUITE EHR.
A key feature of the partnership is the ability of the EHR solution to enable the exchange of health information as well as communication between the health insurer and providers. “This partnership will facilitate communications as well as the exchange of clinical information between payers and physicians. Ultimately, our partnership benefits consumers as it helps enable physicians make the best decisions possible for their patients,” Bruce Perkins, President of Healthcare Services at Humana, stated publicly.
The subsidizing of EHR adoptions by large healthcare organizations is hardly a new development. What is significant is a private payer stepping into the role of benefactor as a means of gaining access to meaningful data that can help lessen the healthcare cost curve. Source
