Blue Shield of California (www.blueshieldca.com) and Anthem Blue Cross (www.anthem.com) are going to work together to develop the “California Integrated Data Exchange” or referred to as Cal INDEX (https://www.calindex.org).
Cal INDEX is an independent not-for-profit organization funded with $80 million in seed funding from Blue Shield of California and Anthem Blue Cross. The funding covers Cal INDEX’s operating costs over the next three years to support the initial integration of about 30 large provider organizations across the state. After three years, participating providers and insurers will provide revenue to the exchange through subscription fees.
Cal INDEX a statewide HIE is going to collect clinical data from healthcare providers and health insurers throughout the state and share data. When launched later this year, the Exchange will include secure online data on about nine million patients which is one fourth of the state’s population.
Cal INDEX open to any health data contributor will be able to:
- Provide clinicians with a unified statewide source of integrated patient information
- Provide patients with a seamless transition between health plans or across various healthcare professionals and hospitals
- Improve efficiency and reduce costs
- Encourage healthcare technology innovation
- Improve public health by providing de-identified data for medical research
Cal INDEX will collect and integrate clinical data from providers and claims data from payers to create retrievable patient-centered records known as “Longitudinal Patient Records” (LPR). Participating providers will be able to access their patients’ LPRs through a provider portal that displays data, alerts, and analytics that will work with most major EMR systems. Providers will have access to basic care management tools, including event-based alerts, and information on patients that are admitted, discharged, and transferred from hospitals.
If a patient’s healthcare provider or health plan participates in the Exchange, the patient will likely be enrolled in Cal INDEX and eligible for the benefits provided. Any patient of a participating provider or member of a participating health plan who does not want their health information shared with health providers or health plans on the exchange can choose not to participate in Cal INDEX. Insurance eligibility will not be affected by the choice to participate or not to participate.
According to Dave Minch, President and Board Chair of the California Association of Health Information Exchanges (www.ca-hie.org) , “Probably the most significant benefit to both providers and patients is the potential opportunity to use clinical data from our enterprise and community HIOs and claims data from Cal INDEX to create actionable analytics to understand a patient’s condition from the analysis of data. Alerts will go to physicians when a patient falls outside of expected treatment parameters.