The State of Maine in partnership with HealthInfoNet, the statewide HIE recently received a three year grant from HRSA to improve care coordination the for the state’s veterans. The funding will be used to connect the VA Maine Healthcare System comprised of the medical center located in Augusta and eleven outpatient clinics in the state to the HIE. The state will receive $300,000 for the first year and expects a similar award amount for years two and three.
This funding is greatly needed since the VA’s Office of Rural Health shows that 12.8 percent of Maine residents are veterans which is the fifth highest per capital population in the country. Since Maine is a large rural state, access to VA facilities can be challenging and very often veterans must seek care from their community’s private hospitals, mental health providers, community health centers, and physician practices. The makes it difficult for both the VA and private providers to coordinate veterans care.
To add to the problem, even though many of Maine’s private providers are connected to the state’s HIE, the care that veterans receive in Maine’s VA facilities is not accessible through the HIE and as a result, VA providers are unable to access information from private providers using the system.
Up to date information released in the “Maine State Innovation Model (SIM) Operations Plan for sustainable Health Care Reform” released September 2013, shows the progress that the HIE has recently accomplished.
As reported, so far in 2013, there are 38 acute care hospitals in the state. As of now, 34 of these hospitals are sending data to the HIE, and the remaining four are in the process of setting up their interfaces and anticipate going live on the HIE before the end of 2013.
The state finds that while the HIE adds value, due to the low payment rates for behavioral health providers, cost still remains an issue. To help defray the cost for behavioral health providers, Maine will use the SIM funds to cover the interface and annual connection costs for up to 25 behavioral health organizations statewide beginning January 2014.
The exchange also sends automated laboratory results to the Maine CDC for 30 of the 72 diseases mandated for reporting by the State. Recently, HIN has been working with the federal CDC in a demonstration to validate that population health reporting can be achieved using a statewide HIE and an ONC-funded population health tool called “popHealth”. The work with the “popHealth” analytical tool has expanded the HIE’s experience in managing large databases to support analytical reporting and helped develop the HIE data warehouse in 2013.
Maine’s “ConnectME Authority”, an independent State agency governed by a public-private board, each year awards grants for projects to expand telehealth services, educational opportunities, and in general to improve healthcare. To date, the Authority has awarded more than $9 million for projects totaling more than $17 million.
The FCC recently announced that it will provide up to $60 million nationwide for grants to improve telehealth for Long Term Care (LTC) providers, home health, and hospice organizations. The State HIT State Coordinator and HIE plan to develop three grant proposals to be submitted later this year.
One grant proposal will involve initiating an EHR project to use with LTC organizations in the state to develop a care electronic application to be used for patients discharged from hospitals to LTC facilities.
Another proposed grant would establish a telehealth project to enable providers, particularly home health workers to communicate electronically with hospitals and physicians. Another proposal would be submitted to find a way to use electronic systems to provide ICU or surgery follow-up care management and nursing services at home along with telehealth to provide mental health or counseling services.
The three proposed projects would complement SIM to develop community service response systems so that the elderly and others would be able to remain in their homes or in long term care facilities if needed that would allow healthcare providers to have access to accurate and timely information through the use of the HIE and perhaps new technologies.
Go to www.maine.gov/dhhs/oms/sim/steering/docs/DIM-OPS-PLAN-9-27-13.pdf to view the Plan. For more information email Randal Chenard at randal.chenard@maine.gov or call (207) 287-3707.