Tuesday, October 19, 2010

The Massachusetts HIE Use Cases

Yesterday I met with the Massachusetts Secretary of Health and Human Services and the HIT Council (our state HIT governance body) to review the Massachusetts Health Information Exchange (HIE) use cases - how will the patient experience differ when the HIE is fully functional.

In the past, we've presented the HIE gaps that need to be filled via procurement.

The Secretary asked for a complete vision, complemented by use cases illustrating e-prescribing, care coordination, public health, consumer engagement, and emergency department query workflow.   Here's what I presented.

For each use case, you'll see current state in 2010, then future state in 2011-2013.  

In our HIE discussion with the HIT Council thus far, we've used the following framework

Establish governance characteristics and consider governance structure operations
Establish priorities for healthcare information exchange
Identify functional gaps in technology and adoption
Broadly communicate the multi-year HIE vision
Describe the operating model (in our case that's Governing Body, Program Management Office, Service Providers)
Define the characteristics of the RFP(s)
Procure
Operationalize
Evaluate

So far, this framework has serve us well.    We currently have 10,000 providers connected to our existing HIEs.   In 2011, we will hopefully ensure the remaining 10,000 have all the services they need to connect every provider to every other provider in the Commonwealth.

3 comments:

  1. John,

    This is an excellent summary that helps to distinguish what is needed now and where we are headed. It is the use cases that provide illustration and understanding. What is most striking to me is how similar the functionality is for 2011 to what we do today, so it will be imperative for the new HIE to not overburden any process to participate in it. However, the future models do anticipate changes in information access and the tricky part will be how to describe this to our patients, providers and communities so that they understand the value in participating

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  2. Does the HIE envision inclusion of post acute care providers, such as community VNA ands home health agencies at some point?

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  3. Excellent work John! Looks like Mass. is again the pioneering state leading the way towards the future with Health IT. I am also very glad that the patient perspective is being brought on the table when discussing the HIE model.

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