Summary and Report

Health Information Exchange: From Start Up to Sustainability:

SUMMARY   |   REPORT

Health Information Exchange: From Start Up to Sustainability was made possible by a $2.9 million grant #1D1BTO1017-02-02 from the Office for the Advancement of Telehealth, Health Resources and Services Administration, Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS).  The findings in this report are the result of lessons learned from eHI’s ten funded “learning laboratories” whose projects focused on developing and using information technology tools in order to establish sustainable electronic health information exchanges. 

The report is a capstone to four years of studying HIE works-in-progress, recognizing that eHI’s  Connecting Communities represent the ground-breakers for subsequent generations of HIEs and the furtherance of electronic health information exchange, which is what is shaping the healthcare delivery system of the future. 

The report discusses in detail what is working in HIE today and what is needed for sustainability tomorrow.  It proposes that HIE sustainability, while not easy, is possible IF organizations can view themselves as accountable business managers, not as philanthropies or social utility enterprises. There is no “silver bullet”.  Building social and human capital is vital to HIE value, success and sustainability. 

In short, the report offers solutions and tools designed to assist communities in conceptualizing and developing sustainable HIE initiatives. It leverages the very latest lessons learned from eHI’s extensive review of community-level health information exchange.  While a nationwide health information network may be the ultimate goal, the proposition from this study is that its foundation is firmly grounded in the local efforts of grassroot multi-stakeholder organizations.