In the next few weeks, BIDMC will begin sending 50,000 patient encounter records per week through the state HIE (the MassHIWay) to our quality measurement service operated by the Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative. Also in a few weeks, all the daily reportable lab, syndromic surveillance, and immunization data required by Meaningful Use Stage 2 will be sent to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health via the state HIE.

On Monday, the governance body of the state's healthcare IT activities, the Massachusetts HIT Council, met to discuss the next phase of our state HIE work - creating the technology and policy to support community wide "pull" of records with patient consent, not just the pushing of records from place to place that is required by Meaningful Use Stage 2.

There are tricky policy issues to resolve. Does the substance abuse treatment data sharing regulation 42 CFR Part 2 apply to hospitals and doctors without substance abuse treatment programs? How will the Massachusetts HIV consent requirement (opt in to view at each episode of care) be implemented electronically? How will the new HIPAA Omnibus rule requiring restricted flow of self-pay encounters be implemented electronically?  

Here are the slides we used to describe the inputs from our technology, consumer, provider, and legal policy workgroups.

Our next step is to continue our adoption acceleration grant program and build transaction volume. We expect the pace of adoption to grow exponentially as organizations prepare for Meaningful Use Stage 2 attestation and must exchange transition of care summaries for 10% of their patient visits.