The August HIT Council Meeting

On Monday, the HIT Council met to review progress on health information exchange in Massachusetts.   Here's the presentation we used.

You'll see that we've sent 1,349,083 transactions through the MassHIway.

Increasingly we're seeing subnetworks - aggregations of clinicians in regions of the state - joining the MassHIway to send transactions to other subnetworks.  We've heard presentations from our colleagues in Holyoke and the Pioneer Valley, both of which have created exchanges specific to their clinical service areas.   Our network of network vision is becoming a reality very quickly.

We're guided by a simple policy goal - to demonstrate measurable improvements in care quality, population health, and cost containment through use of health information technology

We're using grants to motivate stakeholders by:

-Encouraging vendor development of Direct-complaint interfaces, initiated within the workflow of their applications  and that will enable use of the Mass HIway by Massachusetts’ providers
-Accelerate connections to the Mass HIway
-Grow transaction volume

Major vendors such as Meditech are in testing and major providers such as Partners and Childrens will go live soon.

BIDMC is sending thousands of transactions per day to registries, providers, payers, and public health.   We're working with several grantees to expand the number and type of transactions including routing to patients/PHRs directly.

Our next major milestone is MassHIway Phase II which includes a master patient index and relationship locator service for "pulling" data with patient consent in an emergency.

So far, we're on time, on budget and making rapid progress with the MassHIWay.  It's great to see sustainable HIE supported by the community and demanded as part of accountable care operations.