Fridsma added that successes have been made possible because of dedicated volunteers who share their expertise and countless hours of their time to participate in the Standards & Interoperability Framework initiatives, so that the building blocks are in place for interoperable HIE to become a standard of care.
 
The HIE Roadmap includes multiple examples of leading HIE-enabling organizations that are leveraging nationally-recognized HIE standards to improve patient care, achieve efficiencies and realize cost savings.
 
“The availability of national standards is a critical foundation for HIE,” said Keith Hepp, interim CEO, HealthBridge. “With this in place, HealthBridge is able to focus on connecting our customers to better information that brings value, improves patient care and positions them for success in a changing environment.”
 
The third section of the HIE Roadmap suggests a four-phase process for making progress toward full HIE: 
HIE objectives and vision, market assessment, strategy development and strategy implementation. 

These phases and the steps within them are intended to help all healthcare organizations seeking to use HIE to improve patient care, regardless of where they may be on the continuum that leads to full interoperability and widespread HIE.
 
“This roadmap synthesizes a great deal of valuable information that may be helpful for many types of organizations either directly involved with HIE or enabling HIE,” said Michael Matthews, CEO, MedVirginia. “As a public-private partnership with multi-stakeholder engagement, NeHC is well positioned to convene stakeholders to tackle ongoing HIE challenges and encourage consensus on best practices that can be widely disseminated.”
 
NeHC consulted with many stakeholders to validate its belief that there was a need for this type of document designed to help stakeholders understand the current landscape and to chart a path forward for those actively working to advance HIE. More than 60 experts and HIE thought leaders directly provided advice and input into the final HIE Roadmap.  A common theme heard through the expert feedback was that challenges remain and there is a need for a collaborative process to tackle remaining challenges.
 
The release of the HIE roadmap kicks off the launch of NeHC’s new HIE Learning Network. The network will include a series of workgroups to build consensus on best practices that can bring value by addressing some of the ongoing HIE challenges. NeHC will begin this process by seeking feedback from all interested stakeholders on the most important issues to tackle. Based on feedback to date, initial topics for these workgroups may include:

• Business models for financial sustainability
• Measures of success
• Best practices for prioritizing and phasing implementation of HIE services
• Stakeholder engagement and governance best practices
• Best practices for evaluating and selecting technology solutions
• Addressing variations in implementation of interoperability standards
• Strategies and value propositions for consumer engagement
• Patient consent models and best practices
• Best practices for patient matching
• Secondary uses of data opportunities and best practices
• Payer and employer engagement in HIE
• Role and function of HIE in support of accountable care

Download Health Information Exchange Roadmap: The Landscape and a Path Forward, volunteer opinions on key issues and commit to joining an HIE Learning Network workgroup at nationalehealth.org/hie-roadmap.

[See also: NeHC takes collaboration online]

[See also: NeHC report highlights 12 leaders in the HIE space]