CT launches long-awaited health info exchange
After 14 years of false starts and scrapped plans, officials said Monday they have launched Connecticut’s statewide health information exchange, a single repository of medical data that can be accessed by any provider tied to a patient’s care.
Forty-four providers have already signed on to the system, known as “Connie,” including Hartford HealthCare, Yale New Haven Health and the Pro Health Physicians network.
Health care practitioners are required to participate in the HIE. By law, hospitals and laboratories have one year to sign up once the exchange is deemed operational. Other providers have two years. The state has set up a secure email system so medical personnel who don’t have access to the proper technology can communicate with the HIE until the infrastructure is in place. Funding is available for providers who need help connecting to the exchange.
Officials have said it could take two to three years to get everyone fully on board.
“We are now officially on the path that many other states have traveled to improve health care by sharing data so that it’s available when and where it’s needed,” said Vicki Veltri, head of the Connecticut’s Office of Heatlh Strategy. “Information that’s accessible in real time is critical for good health care.”
The launch of the exchange comes after more than a decade of failed attempts and shifting plans.
The first bid started in 2007 with a plan to build a network for Medicaid patients. But most physicians had not yet switched to electronic health records, and the state’s medical professionals weren’t ready for it.
A second attempt in 2011 – through the Department of Public Health and a quasi-public group called the Health Information Technology Exchange CT (HITE-CT) – got off to a stronger start but was mired in a legal battle and later folded. The third venture was overseen by the Department of Social Services and lasted 10 months, beginning in 2016. That effort also centered on Medicaid-based initiatives, while larger plans for a statewide HIE were left for those who spearheaded the fourth – and most recent – attempt in 2017.
At least $18 million was spent on the first three projects. About $48 million was set aside for the latest effort, with 10% of that covered by the state and federal funds making up the rest. By last fall, more than $20 million of the $48 million had been spent. Officials did not have an updated figure on Monday. HIE organizers are required to use the remainder of the federal money by September 2021.
After COVID-19 spread through Connecticut, health officials here – including the exchange’s former director, Allan Hackney – lamented the system’s late arrival. The need for up-to-the-minute, robust patient information has become more pressing during the pandemic, and the lack of a broad health information exchange put the state at a disadvantage, they said.
Other states have used their systems to trace outbreaks in nursing homes, to identify COVID-19 hotspots in communities, to analyze data on race and ethnicity and to help agencies access more extensive patient information in the midst of an emergency.
“I just wonder how many people could have been saved had we had this up and running,” Hackney, the state’s former Chief Information Technology Officer, told The CT Mirror in October.