The California Regional Health Information Organization (CalRHIO) will announce by mid-March which of eight would-be contractors it will hire to build and finance a statewide health information exchange service.
The nonprofit, statewide organization issued a request for proposals in December 2006. CalRHIO announced today that the bidders are Accenture; Covisint; Computer Sciences Corp.; IBM, partnering with Axolotl; McKesson; Medicity; Sun Microsystems, and Wellogic.
Over the next several weeks, those companies will make presentations to a team of technology and business experts helping CalRHIO evaluate the proposals.
"We specifically required that potential partners have relevant experience and working products to offer, as well as coherent and detailed plans for how to finance and sustain the project," Dr. Don Holmquest, president and chief executive officer of CalRHIO, said in a statement.
The winning contractor must be able to deliver an established service-oriented architecture framework, Web services platform, application components and operational support services for an exchange within and across health care organizations statewide.
CalRHIO asked responders to design the underlying financial model for ongoing operations of an exchange. "Focusing on the expense of building an enterprise without designing the methodology for funding its long-term existence is a futile exercise," Holmquest said.
For communities that want to make it possible for physicians, hospitals and pharmacies to electronically access patient medical records, CalRHIO will provide a suite of secure, privacy-protecting services. Communities won't have to start from scratch to finance and build infrastructure, and individual health care providers will not need to replace their systems.
"By 2014, we want to make it possible for any authorized health care provider in California to be able to securely access patient information, regardless of where health care services are delivered,” Holmquest said. “The partner we choose will help us build a utility-like infrastructure that moves health care information efficiently and at a cost that is a small fraction of the money that such a system can generate in savings."
A fully deployed statewide exchange could save California $9 billion annually, according to some estimates.
Three of the bidders for the CalRHIO contract æ Accenture, CSC and IBM æ are completing federal contracts under which they built prototypes of a Nationwide Health Information Network.
Government Health IT presents Liesa Jo Jenkins, executive director of CareSpark, in this recent eSeminar, where she shared her experiences and insight into building a health information exchange that enhances community health, rewards regional collaboration and drives economic progress.
