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Learning from the history of statewide health data exchange
Learning from the history of statewide health data exchange
- Collection:
- Health Policy and Services Research
- Contributor(s):
- California HealthCare Foundation, issuing body.
- Publication:
- [Oakland, CA] : California Health Care Foundation, July 2021
- Language(s):
- English
- Format:
- Text
- Subject(s):
- Health Information Exchange
California
United States - Genre(s):
- Interview
- Abstract:
- The COVID-19 crisis has sparked calls for a statewide health data network to assist with emergency response and public health efforts. The problem is that health data do not flow across large areas of California, access to patient records is limited and fragmented in areas where sharing does happen, and many kinds of health records are left out. (See the California Health Care Foundation [CHCF] report Designing a Statewide Health Data Network: What California Can Learn from Other States.) California policymakers are taking a significant opportunity to improve the state’s fragmented regional data-sharing efforts and become a model for the country. California Governor Gavin Newsom’s budget proposal and the budget passed by the Legislature includes $2.5 million to develop health information exchange (HIE) leadership within the state. There is also active legislation seeking to advance HIE in the state. Together, we should use past lessons to plan and build successful data exchange initiatives for the future. But California has been down this road before, with a failed attempt to create a statewide data exchange that ended nearly a decade ago. Policymakers would be well advised to examine the factors that stymied earlier efforts. Though HIE in California started at a regional level in Santa Cruz in 1996 (See A Timeline of Health Data Exchange in California.), statewide HIE efforts began in earnest just over 10 years ago. In 2009, a scaled initiative to create a statewide system of data exchange began when the state received more than $100 million in federal funding as part of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act. From the beginning, the program faced challenges, including a lack of guidance at the state level, federal delays in setting national standards, leadership turnover, and other organizational hurdles. California’s statewide data exchange efforts would ultimately end in 2014, with the end of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) Cooperative Agreement funds, part of the HITECH Act that provided funding for HIE. The state’s inability to overcome its challenges would eventually lead to a continuation of the mostly uncoordinated system of regional health information organizations (HIOs) that remains in place today. We asked Dawn Gallagher, a national expert on state wide data exchanges, to outline what she learned after reviewing literature and interviewing some of the stakeholders who played critical roles in the design and implementation of California’s statewide efforts from 2009 to 2014 (See below for a list of interviewees.). We share Gallagher’s answers to key questions about that effort, which policymakers and other stakeholders can consider to reform HIE today.
- Copyright:
- Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further use of the material is subject to CC BY-NC-ND license. (More information)
- Extent:
- 1 online resource (1 PDF file (5 pages))
- NLM Unique ID:
- 9918366982606676 (See catalog record)
- Permanent Link:
- http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/9918366982606676