Direct Project Pilots Drive Toward Exchange of Electronic Health Information
Programs underway in Minnesota and Rhode Island; six other states will launch soon.
On Feb. 2, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) announced that providers and public health agencies in Minnesota and Rhode Island have begun exchanging health information using specifications developed by a government initiative. The Direct Project initiative calls for cooperative efforts by organizations in the health care and information technology (IT) sectors.
ONC said other Direct Project pilot programs will also be launched soon in six other states to demonstrate the effectiveness of the Direct Project approach.
The Direct Project was launched in March 2010 as a part of the Nationwide Health Information Network, to specify a simple, secure, scalable, standards-based way for participants to send authenticated, encrypted health information directly to known, trusted recipients over the Internet in support of Stage 1 Meaningful Use requirements. Participants include electronic health record (EHR) and personal health record (PHR) vendors, medical organizations, systems integrators, integrated delivery networks, federal organizations, state and regional health information organizations, organizations that provide health information exchange capabilities, and health IT consultants.
Information transfers supported by Direct Project specifications address core needs, including standardized exchange of laboratory results; physician-to-physician transfers of summary patient records; transmission of data from physicians to hospitals for patient admission; transmission of hospital discharge data back to physicians; and transmission of information to public health agencies, according to ONC. In addition to representing most-needed information transfers for clinicians and hospitals, these information exchange capabilities will also support providers in meeting meaningful-use objectives established last year by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, and will thus support providers in qualifying for Medicare and Medicaid incentive payments in their use of EHRs.
ONC said the project is on track to give U.S. health care providers "early access to an easy-to-use, Internet-based tool that can replace mail and fax transmissions of patient data with secure and efficient electronic health information exchange."
David Blumenthal, MD, national coordinator for health information technology, commented: "Other efforts are also going forward at full-throttle to build a comprehensive structure of health information exchange. But by bringing together health care and IT companies, including competitors, to rapidly produce a system that supports basic clinical delivery and public health needs, we will be able to more quickly start building electronic information exchange into our health care system."
Here's what's happening in the two pilot programs that have already begun using Direct Project-based information exchange:
- Since mid-January, Hennepin County Medical Center, a Level 1 Adult and Pediatric Trauma Center, has been successfully sending immunization records to the Minnesota Department of Health.
- The Rhode Island Quality Institute (RIQI) is improving patient care when patients are referred to specialists by demonstrating simple, direct provider-to-provider data. Also, RIQI is leveraging Direct Project messaging as a means to securely feed clinical information, with patient consent, from practice-based EHRs to the state-wide health information exchange to improve quality by detecting gaps in care and making sure the full record is available to all care providers.
Other pilot projects to be launched this year include:
- a Tennessee effort with the Veteran's Administration, local hospitals and CareSpark to provide care to veterans and their families;
- a New York effort including clinicians in hospital and ambulatory care settings with MedAllies and EHR vendors;
- a Connecticut effort involving patients, hospitals, ambulatory care settings and a Federally Qualified Health Center with Medical Professional Services, a PHR, and a major reference laboratory;
- an expansion of the VisionShare immunization data pilot to Oklahoma;
- a California rural care effort involving patients, hospitals and ambulatory care settings with Redwood MedNet; and
- an effort in South Texas with a collaboration of hospitals, ambulatory care settings, public health and community health organizations to improve care to mothers with gestational diabetes and their newborns.
Click here for more information on the Direct Project.