Timothy A. Pletcher, Executive Director for the Michigan Health Information Network (MiHIN) Shared Services testified before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions www.help.senate.gov at the June 16th hearing “Achieving the Promise of Health Information Technology: What Can Providers and HHS do to Improve the EHR User Experience”.
Dr, Pletcher reports that Michigan has simplified the interconnectivity problem by creating MiHIN www.mihin.org, a network-of-networks with shared services that focus on unique health information sharing scenarios called “Use Cases”.
Each Use Case is a package of health information to be shared. Examples can include a pharmacy updating a state registry with a person’s recent immunization information, a hospital notifying a primary care doctor that the patient was discharged from the hospital, or a behavioral health specialist informing a primary care provider of a change to a mutual patient’s care plan
Use Case components include a summary explaining the purpose and business care for sharing data, a use case agreement, and a use Case implementation guide with specifications outlining the standard format for data transmission and content.
Dr. Pletcher specifically wants to encourage HHS to prioritize the top 100 most valuable or important Use Cases. This would include developing a formal value proposition for each Use Case Summary to discuss decreasing costs, improving the patient experience, increasing quality, or specifically reducing provider burdens.
It would also require focused legal agreements to be included outlining the rules of engagement for sharing the data within that Use Case Agreement. Once these agreements are completed than individuals would understand how their data would be used and allow them to consent to share their data for specific purposes.
Finally for each Use Case there should be an associated implementation guide describing exactly how to implement the underlying data standards to best support the function of the use case and to insure interoperability.