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PPV: Health information exchanges on the rise to share data, improve care

EHR Connection, January 7, 2008

In today's world of heightened privacy and security, a request to share personal medical information is not a question that many people take lightly.

More than 750,000 patients in Tennessee and Virginia faced this question in 2006 when CareSpark, a health information exchange (HIE), sought their buy-in to allow two large community-based health systems with a total of 16 hospitals to share their medical data.

Ensuring that the public understood how the HIE would operate was the greatest barrier to an initiative that ultimately became one of the region's most significant efforts to improve public health, Liesa Jenkins, CareSpark's executive director, told an audience at the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) annual conference in Philadelphia October 7-10, 2007.

If your state is considering an HIE, start by communicating your intent to the community in which it will exist, said Jenkins. An HIE provides access to one or more repositories for information that several stakeholders-including hospitals-might provide, she said.

Click here to learn more about how you can garner community support when establishing an HIE.

The cost is $10. Subscribers to Medical Records Briefing can sign on for free access.

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