Jamie Welch, the CIO of the Louisiana Rural Health Information Exchange (LARHIX) calls the benefits of HIE for participating providers is "astronomical."

Welch was among the industry insiders who gathered at the e-Health Initiative's annual conference Jan. 25-26 in Washington, DC. They touted health information exchange as capable of saving providers and states thousands of dollars while improving patient care, particularly in underserved or uninsured populations such as rural Louisiana.

LARHIX links Louisiana' rural hospitals to the Louisiana State University Health Science Center in Shreveport, allowing patients to get specialized healthcare via telemedicine.
Welch reported participating providers are saving $5,000 monthly and patient surveys show 100 percent satisfaction.

LARHIX provides free healthcare IT to participating doctors. In return they are obliged to follow certain standards of care and generate reports of their outcomes. "This is a big boon to population health," Welch said.

Other panelists said the positive impact of HIEs has only just begun.
Rodney Cain, CIO at HealthBridge, an HIE with 24 hospitals and more than 5,000 physicians in Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky said the proposed meaningful use rule is already having a positive effect on the HIE community.

Leanard Lichtenfeld, MD, deputy chief medical officer at the American Cancer Society said the process of luring physicians into adopting healthcare IT won't be as simple as merely offering them incentives.

"They don't have the time or money to adopt what they will need to qualify for meaningful use and they have already spent money on healthcare IT," he said.

Tom Liddell, executive director of the Michigan Health Information Exchange said physicians in his community are reporting a shortfall in their return on investment on healthcare IT.

At the HIPAA conference Feb. 4 in Washington, D.C., Reed Tuckson, MD, and executive vice president of the Minneapolis-based UnitedHealth Group said sustainability is the major challenge to HIEs.

"We have to get behind this now and get national performance standards and the ability to share data quickly," he said. "We've also got to bring the cost down if we're going to get anybody to play."