Colorado just became the latest state to post its own roadmap toward widespread use of health IT.

Other U.S. states including Arizona and Vermont have undertaken similar initiatives as well. Colorado, like the others, worked with Mosaica Partners to develop its statewide health IT plan.

“The Roadmaps are broader than technology. Broader than interoperability,” Mosaica Partners President Laura Kolkman said. “Broader than Medicaid and State agencies.”  

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Broader, indeed, and they do take technology, interoperability and state agencies into account. Colorado reviewed the Office of the National Coordinator’s Nationwide Interoperability Roadmap, according to Colorado State HIT Coordinator Carrie Paykoc.

While ONC is focusing on a national level and looking ahead to at least 2024, Paykoc said Colorado’s new plan is a statewide strategy for the next 3 to 5 years.

“We are aligning with national efforts, as well as leveraging Colorado's information assets including two sustainable HIEs, an APCD, a clinical measures reporting network, a telehealth network, our top ten digital health innovation community,” added Mary Anne Leach, Director of Colorado’s Office of eHealth Innovation.

The plan involves 16 key initiatives to advance what the state considers its own Triple Aim of Best Care, Best Health, Best Value — that is perhaps a snappier slogan but one conceptually akin to the Triple Aim widely credited to Donald Berwick, MD.  

Colorado intends to make that happen with the initiatives that support care coordination and enable consumer engagement and empowerment. That will require data governance to harmonize health information exchange, to integrate various data types including behavioral, claims, physical and social, according to the plan.

The Colorado Health IT Roadmap also looks to establish affordable analytics, cybersecurity best practices, consent management and digital health innovation.

Colorado’s roadmap also plots a course to establishing a statewide HIT architecture that, in turn, eases the burden of quality reporting, improves patient matching across health systems, identifies individual providers and their affiliations tied to patient relationships, and creates broadband to enable statewide virtual care.

In the Vermont Health Information Technology Plan, published in 2016, also developed with Kolkman and Mosaica Partners, the state outlined similar goals: establish strong leadership and governance for HIE, expand engage clinicians and patients, expand connectivity and interoperability, provide reliable health data and timely access to it, and continue making privacy a top priority.

Arizona first published a health IT roadmap in 2006 and subsequently issued the post-HITECH Arizona Health IT Roadmap 2.0 in 2014 with supporting clinicians in adopting and using IT, expanding the secure sharing of health data and coordinating strategy development to keep pace with changing HIE practices and technologies.

Paykoc said that Colorado is working to partner with local communities to achieve these goals and to figure out what works best in the state.

“If we are using running analogies,” Paykoc said, “we completed the first 20 miles of the marathon and are heading into the last 6.2 miles.”

Twitter: SullyHIT
Email the writer: tom.sullivan@himssmedia.com