Low doctor-patient ratios and the historically high cost of HIE software has made it more difficult for rural health providers than their urban counterparts to share health information with other providers.
While the ultimate success of an HIE depends on making HIE solutions available to as many health providers as possible, past attempts to address their specific needs have proven to be cost prohibitive due to the initial capital expenditure required as well as the funding needed to pay for additional IT staff.
In February, Healthcare Access San Antonio (HASA), www.hasatx.org a community collaborative initiative providing medical care for Central Texas residents through the HIE, along with the Texas Organization of Rural and Community Hospitals (TORCH), and Holon Solutions, are working to make connecting the region-wide HIE affordable for rural health providers.
The HIE initiative with TORCH and Holon Solutions will connect area hospitals, clinics, physician offices and other providers in the 22 counties in South Texas included in HASA’s service area.
HASA has selected Mana Health’s patient gateway patient portal called MyHASA which is expected to launch by July to aggregate all of a patient’s health record into one easily accessible and navigable portal across multiple organizations.
Holon’s HIE interoperability solution called the CollaborNet HIE uses reporting capabilities provided by physicians EMR systems and transforms the information into a format that can be received by HASA.
Recently, Holon and TORCH announced an agreement to build an HIE to connect the 60 bed North Texas Medical Center (NTMC) and their EHR system to physician clinics in the Gainesville, Texas area. In the initial phase of the CollaborNet project, NTMC will exchange lab orders and results, radiology orders, and patient discharge summaries with clinics.
Future plans include exchanging Continuity of Care Documents with unaffiliated organizations, connecting to the Texas immunization registry called ImmTrac, and sending Syndromic surveillance information to county health organizations.