Brookings: Consensus from Policymakers Necessary for HIE Success

Private sector buy-in and an alignment of state and federal policies is essential to the long-term success of health information exchanges, according to a paper published by The Brookings Institution.

The effort to implement HIEs is a "megachange" challenge--one that impacts multiple parties in both "big and complex" manners--authors Darrell West and Allan Friedman write. West serves as vice president and director of Governance Studies for Brookings, and is the founding director of the institution's Center for Technology Innovation (CTI); Friedman is a fellow in governance studies and is the CTI's research director.

In reviewing how a select handful of states handled HIE implementation, West and Friedman determine that Indiana and Massachusetts have made "significant progress" in terms of overall organization, financing and delivery, while Tennessee and California have shown far less progress. Indiana, the authors say, was helped by its early innovator status; the launch of the Indiana Network for Patient Care nearly two decades ago served as a model for the creation of the Indiana Health Information Exchange and Indiana Health Information Technology.

Read more at: http://tinyurl.com/7oa6my6

Source: FierceHealthIT