Sutter Health executives say its health information exchange will enable doctors and hospitals -- inside and outside its network of care -- to securely share clinical information. The organization sees it as a game changer, one that will boost care coordination and clinical quality across Northern California.

Sutter Health is working with Orion Health to build and deploy the HIE.

Suttter Health's EHR connects five medical foundations and 17 hospital campuses. By 2015, Sutter expects to complete its Epic EHR installation to better support care delivery to 3 million active patients in more than 100 Northern California cities and towns.

[See also: Setback for Sutter after $1B EHR crashes.]

"An HIE system will allow us to securely exchange up-to-date patient information with Sutter Health clinicians as well as those not affiliated with our organization, providing us with complete, secure 360-degree views of patients' care and health histories, wherever and whenever it's needed," said Chris Jaeger, MD, Sutter Health's chief medical information officer, in announcing the HIE step. "Improved delivery of reliable information can be especially important in emergencies -- when every second counts for patients in distress."

"More and more organizations are realizing the critical need for technology that facilitates the sharing of patient information," said James Date, senior vice president, sales, Orion Health, in a news release. "They want to meet regulatory requirements, and more importantly, they want to share information quickly and securely -- often across multiple facilities."

[See also: Caradigm platform to integrate Orion Health HIE capabilities.]

Sutter Health will begin deploying the HIE in phases this summer. The first step involves basic data integration with the Sutter EHR as well as testing the exchange of inbound and outbound data to ensure quality.