The Veterans Administration’s www.va.gov Canandaigua VA Medical Center is now participating in the Rochester RHIO’s www.RochesterRHIO.org community HIE. The Rochester RHIO is part of the Statewide Health Information Network for New York (SHIN-NY) www.nyehealth.or/shin-ny and serves over one million patients in Upstate New York.
Today, many veterans receive care from both VA and community providers. Participation in RHIO services will enable authorized VA users to securely look up medical information from community provider visits in the RHIO’s clinical query tool called Explore. Clinicians now have access to a more comprehensive patient health record which is important in determining a veteran’s care and treatment plan.
In addition to radiology reports and images, the data available through the RHIO’s HIE, includes hospital admission and discharge transactions, hospital reports, medication histories, lab reports and basic demographic information. Other services available through the RHIO include digital image exchanges, hospitalization alerts, direct messaging, electronic results delivery, and public health reporting.
In another part of the country, the Colorado Regional Health Information Organization (CORHIO) www.corhio.org with funding from the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing www.colorado.gov/hcpf, has developed the architecture to use the “Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources” FHIR® https://www.hl7.org/fhir to retrieve and view patient data in the CORHIO HIE.
FHIR is a registered trademark of HL7 and is a next generation standards framework created by HL7. FHIR is suitable for use in mobile phone apps, cloud communications, EHR-based data sharing, server communication in large institutional healthcare providers, plus much more. FHIR is explained as an infrastructure that enables a model similar to the apps found in smart phones.
It is hoped that enhanced FHIR functionality will enable more advanced population health management to support value-based healthcare in Colorado. CORHIO also plans to advance health information exchange beyond clinical data to include new information such as social determinants of health with additional data on housing, transportation, and financial information.