“The first use of data is for treatment,” said Maggie Gunter, president and executive director. Beyond that, RHIOs can sustain themselves and build a business case for HIE by providing services to other entities.

Aggregated reporting capability related to improving treatment would be valuable to health plans, said Gunter. With patient and provider consent for population use of data, RHIOs can track and provide aggregated reporting on health plans’ diabetes patients.

The Long Beach Network for Health, or LBNH, is a coalition of healthcare providers and stakeholders tasked with providing quality healthcare for its community members through an HIE.

Among its goals is to develop integrated virtual patient records to support any health event, said executive director Laura Landry. LBNH will also collect data in the foreseeable future, and will determine then how to best use the data for other services.