Oregon’s Health IT Update

HIT Commons, a public/private partnership, was formed to coordinate investment in health IT, and advance HIE across Oregon. HIT Commons is co-sponsored by the Oregon Health Leadership Council (OHLC) http://www.orhealthleadershipcouncil.org and the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) https://www.oregon.gov.The role of the HIT Commons Governance is to accelerate the selection, procurement, financing, implementation, and adoption of health IT initiatives.

HIT Commons oversees two major initiatives. The “Oregon Emergency Department Information Exchange” (EDIE) along with “PreManage” connects hospital EDs across various geographies and organizations to provide a comprehensive snapshot of high risk, high need individuals in real time. When a patient registers in any ED in Oregon, EDIE is alerted and can push back an EDIE notification.

PreManage is a web-based application that expands the services in EDIE to other users in EDIE to provide critical information to healthcare organizations outside the hospital system. Information is provided to health plans, Coordinated Care Organizations (CCO), physical and behavioral providers, dental clinics in real time, or when a patient or member has a hospital event.

All of Oregon’s CCOs receive hospital notifications through PreManage or are in contract. Most major Oregon health plans are using PreManage as well as all of Oregon’s Dental Care Organization along with four tribal clinics.

In addition, behavioral health continues to be a major category of PreManage users and the Agency on Aging & People with Disability District Offices uses PreManage. Also, the Developmental Disability Program available through the Oregon Department of Human Services uses PreManage along PreManage slated to be used at the Oregon State Hospital.

The second initiative Oregon’s Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP) connects EDIE, HIEs, EHRs, and pharmacy management systems to Oregon’s PDMP which includes information on prescriptions filled and information on controlled substances.

Nearly 7,500 prescribers across 122 organizations have integrated access to Oregon’s PDMP data either through their EDIE alerts or through one click access at the point-of-care. More than 570 pharmacists at four pharmacy chains across 75 sites are also live.

The Oregon Health IT program https://healthit.oregon.gov has established several programs:

  • The Oregon Provider Directory supports care coordination, HIE, administrative efficiencies, and serves as resource for health analytics
  • The Medicaid EHR Incentive Program offers qualifying Oregon Medicaid providers federally funded financial incentives for the adoption or meaningful use of certified EHR technology. The program ends in 2021
  • Oregon’s Medicaid Meaningful Use Technical Assistance Program operating from 2016 to May 2019 helped Medicaid providers maximize their investments in EHRs
  • The Clinical Quality Metrics Registry (CQMR) launched in 2019, collects, aggregates and provides Electronic Clinical Quality Measure (eCQM) data to meet program requirements and achieve efficiencies for provider reporting
  • The HIE Onboarding Program will increase Medicaid providers’ capability to exchange health information by supporting the costs of an HIE entity to onboard providers, with or without an EHR
  • The “Flat File Directory” assists organizations with identifying direct secure messaging addresses across Oregon