Maine’s statewide health information exchange, HealthInfoNet, has received a $198,659 grant from the Maine Health Access Foundation (MeHAF) to link the HIE with Maine's all-payer claims database. The link will help Maine's medical community improve care quality and drive down costs, officials say.

HealthInfoNet operates the HIE and the claims database is operated by the Maine Health Data Organization.

"Maine's annual health care spending per person is about 20 percent higher than the national average,” said Wendy J. Wolf, MD, MeHAF's president and CEO. “So it is imperative that we find effective healthcare payment reform strategies to flatten or bring down our costs. Linking the data contained in the HIE to the claims database will allow providers and researchers to compare trends in healthcare treatment with corresponding cost data. This kind of research will help providers and policy leaders more quickly identify and implement effective care improvement strategies that can contain costs."

In order to link the clinical and claims databases, HealthInfoNet will create a new system called a data warehouse.
 
"In this system, information is reorganized so that it can more easily be analyzed to generate reports and population health statistics," said Devore Culver, HealthInfoNet's CEO. To protect patient privacy, Culver said the data would be de-identified before it is made available. Names, birth dates and address will be removed to make the data anonymous within reports.

HealthInfoNet is the state-designated entity for managing the health information exchange in Maine, which launched in 2008. The system now contains records for close to one million of Maine's 1.3 million residents and has close to 3,000 registered clinical users, according to officials. Twenty-one hospitals and 58 physician practices are connected, and HealthInfoNet has 11 more hospitals and dozens of practices under contract and slated for connection by the end of 2012.