HealtHIE Nevada is making another major stride in connecting all health-care providers in the state to a health information exchange. We are excited to announce that we will be providing that valuable service to our military veterans by connecting to the United States Department of Veterans Affairs to share clinical information between Nevada community providers and VA medical facilities nationwide.
HealtHIE Nevada is the statewide health information exchange that provides a secure network to help health care providers share electronic health records, or EHRs.
According to the latest U.S. Census Bureau statistics, there are more than 226,000 veterans in Nevada. Many receive care both in the VA system and from non-VA community providers. With HealthHIE’s new connection, providers at the VA will have access to clinical patient information from organizations such as Renown Health, Dignity Health, Saint Mary’s Medical Center, UMC, Valley Health System, Southwest Medical Associates, Steinberg Diagnostics, Desert Radiology, Reno Diagnostic Center and several more. When a veteran seeks treatment from a community provider, those providers will also have access to medical records that are contained in the VA system.
This type of connection is essential to ensure that our veterans have equal access to medical care whether at the VA or in the community. Without this type of connection, veterans would have to collect and transport their own paper records to all their providers. The connection allows all VA and community doctors and nurses to view patient events, laboratory results, radiology reports, medications, discharge information and care summaries all in real time. Veterans can expect this new service to be available in July of this year.
We’re honored to help our veterans by allowing doctors and other health-care providers access to records in a seamless and secure manner.
A quick HIE history
Health information exchanges have been around for more than 20 years. The early health networks usually connected hospitals and laboratories because those were some of the only health-care organizations that had electronic systems and could share data. The federal government, specifically the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, realized that to improve the quality of care and control costs the U.S. health care system needed to embrace and implement electronic systems.
President George Bush kickstarted the effort in 2004 when he created the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. In 2009, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act was enacted. The HITECH Act provided almost $36.5 billion to create a nationwide network of electronic health records and provided incentives for hospitals and providers to install EHRs. The act met its goal of getting health care organizations to install medical records but fell short on creating a nationwide network that would make those EHRs interoperable.
Interoperability is when two systems can talk to one another without human intervention. The banking network of automated teller machines, for example, does not work by each bank creating a connection to all other banks. Rather, the bank connects to an inter-bank network such as Cirrus, Plus, MNET or NYCE to provide connectivity to other banks and to other networks. In the case of EHRs interoperability would be, for example, when a patient’s health record from a hospital stay could be sent to the patient’s primary care provider and all the clinical information could be incorporated on that end. HealtHIE Nevada and all HIEs provide the “inter-EHR” network that allows for interoperability between EHRs.
This new service is designed to enhance care coordination between VA and local health care facilities. While veterans do not have direct access to the clinical data in the health information exchange, they can make their providers aware of this new service and request that community providers participate.
Michael Gagnon is the executive director of HealtHIE Nevada.