Connecticut coalition plans major health IT initiative

A coalition of Connecticut’s leading hospitals, physician practices, federally qualified health centers, insurers and employer groups unveiled July 20 an initiative called Transforming Healthcare in Connecticut Communities (THICC), which aims to provide multiple health IT-related programs.

They include building a statewide health information exchange (HIE); providing subsidies and support to help small physician practices implement electronic health record (EHR) systems; develop training and deployment tools for physicians and healthcare workers; and develop quality measures and performance improvement targets.

“With the passage of the stimulus law and the availability of incentives for physicians to adopt electronic health records, it’s clear that a tipping point has been reached and the time has come for us to provide the linking bridge between all of the applications used by healthcare providers,” said Stephen O’Neill, vice president of information systems at Hartford Healthcare Corp., a THICC member.

The THICC initiative, which initially will be funded solely by THICC members, will work in conjunction with the Connecticut Department of Public Health, which the General Assembly recently designated as the state’s lead health information exchange organization. The legislation, however, did not provide the state agency with funding for technology development.

“The Department of Public Health recognizes that they have a governance mandate to set the rules, define the standards and set the common privacy and security policy procedures that we would all abide by, and then our initiative will provide more of the physical infrastructure that would connect the players together,” said John Lynch, executive director of the Connecticut Center for Primary Care, a THICC member.

Local medical organizations are not waiting until 2011, when stimulus incentives will become available, to get started. Instead, they are providing local physicians with direct funding for EHR systems, loans, large-volume price discounts, technical advice and other support.

“Everyone feels that we just really need to begin to make this happen to help achieve our end goal, which is improved community health,” Lynch said.

The HIE component will rely on direct connections, Web components and edge systems – local hospitals or community systems that doctors can use to hook into a central HIE -- to share patient health summaries or key clinical data such as x-rays.

The details on THICC’s financial sustainability haven’t been finalized, but Lynch expects it to be based on a combination of subscriptions and fee-based scenarios, depending on the type of user and the service offered.

THICC’s governance model is expected to be completed by September and initial elements of the HIE later in the fall, he added

THICC also expects to be able gain access to the medication histories of Medicaid patients, which is currently being developed by the Connecticut Department of Social Services project through a Medicaid Transformation Grant. That data should be available to providers beginning in March 2010.

The biggest challenge to getting underway has been developing the security and privacy policies needed to encourage trust within the medical community and funding, Lynch said.

“I think the stimulus package and the new federal focus on ‘meaningful use’ have invigorated our local efforts to consolidate around a single statewide effort, and we intend to make HIE happen whether or not there are federal grants available in the future,” he said.