Successful Exchange of Clinical Information
Two KHIN early adopter sites in Wichita, Kansas, Via Christi Health Systems and HCA Wesley, transferred clinical data into the KHIN Production Environment during the week of August 3 – August 10, 2012. This successful exchange ensures that vital clinical information on shared patients was exchanged between the two largest health systems in Kansas and other KHIN participants.
During the weeks prior to clinical data exchange, the two sites completed user acceptance testing with KHIN, verifying that its patient data was coming into the KHIN production environment correctly. The implementation supported interoperability across all certified EHR vendors while accommodating individual patient privacy preferences. Access to and sharing of this patient data will improve patient safety and patient health outcomes for Kansans.
KHIN is a statewide health information exchange (HIE) initiative that includes both densely populated urban as well as rural areas in Kansas. The HIE serves all of Kansas including 130 hospitals and more than 4,500 physicians. KHIN is a provider-led and provider-governed health information exchange. Founding members include the Kansas Medical Society, Kansas Hospital Association, and the Wichita Health Information Exchange. KHIN covers approximately 83,000 square miles including frontier, rural and urban medical trading areas, making this effort one of the largest in the U.S.
The next milestone will allow hospitals, providers and patients involved in the Lewis and Clark Health Information Exchange (LACIE), a sister HIE located in Missouri but stretching into Northwest Kansas, to begin to operationalize HIE-to-HIE clinical information exchange, tying all HIE participants throughout the state together for the first time.
“Our first connection with LACIE will be a HISP (Health Information Service Provider) to HISP connection,” said Laura McCrary, Executive Director of KHIN. “This will allow KHIN DIRECT users to share health information point-to-point with LACIE DIRECT users. We will then begin working on a peer-to-peer connection with LACIE to facilitate access to patient data across our exchange platforms.”
Dr. McCrary also noted that the addition of Via Christi and HCA Wesley as active participants in the exchange is the result of year-long preparation by all involved, as well as the whole-hearted support of the state of Kansas for the development of an HIE that will improve care and increase patient safety. This interoperability technology will have community-wide benefit by improving care transitions and care coordination across disparate healthcare providers throughout Kansas.
John Smith is Director of Communications at ICA. This blog post was first published on ICA’s HITme Blog. John has over 20 years of experience in healthcare communications with a focus on health information technology, having served as Senior Vice President and Healthcare Practice Leader at several communications firms, including Fleishmann Hillard, Manning Selvage and Lee and Brodeur Worldwide.