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May 3, 2011, Washington, D.C. – There are more than 234 active health information exchange initiatives (HIE) in the U.S., yet only a small number of them are operational and sustainable, despite the federal government’s expectation that they will play a major role in improving the quality of healthcare over the next decade.

To help move these critical initiatives onto more stable ground, eHealth Initiative (eHI) partnered with the University of Maryland’s Center for Health Information and Decision Systems to conduct an in-depth analysis of data collected through eHI’s 2008 – 2010 Annual Surveys of Health Information Exchanges (HIEs).

Staying Alive: Determinants of HIE Sustainability, built around that analysis, is one of the first reports to empirically analyze the factors that support HIE sustainability.

Key findings in the report include:

• Sustainable HIEs employ fee models, particularly subscription and transaction fees;
• There is a positive relationship between sustainability and offering services that support meaningful use;
• Offering administrative services, such as claims processing and referral processing, have no effect on sustainability or maturity; and
• Most sustainable HIEs provide value-added services, such as an EHR-Lite or quality reporting.

The new report sets the stage for eHI’s 2011 Survey of Health Information Exchanges, to be released on July 14, 2011.

“Staying Alive: Determinants of HIE Sustainability is a benchmark of the HIE world in 2010, a world that is rapidly evolving,” Covich Bordenick said. “We expect HIEs participating in our 2011 survey to report additional growth in maturity and sustainability, and to reveal innovative new approaches to achieve sustainability.”

The full report is available on eHealth Initiative website. It is free for eHI members, and $300 to the public.