Funding Awards Announced for Historic First Public Private-Sector Collaboration on Community Electronic Health Information Exchange

FOR RELEASE JULY 21, 2004, 12:00 P.M. EDT

Contact:
Ticia Gerber
Foundation for eHealth Initiative
202.624-3264
ticia.gerber@ehealthinitiative.org

Over Two Million Dollars Being Distributed to Improve Connectivity, Reduce Medical Errors and Create More Efficient Healthcare for Patients in Their Own Communities

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 21 — The Foundation for eHealth Initiative (eHI) today announced the selection of nine communities nationwide that are being awarded funding -- collectively totaling over $2 million -- through the Connecting Communities for Better Health (CCBH) program to pursue local projects in electronic health information exchange. Announcement of the CCBH awards were made as part of the NHII 2004 Cornerstones for Electronic Healthcare Conference during the Secretarial Summit on Health Information Technology (HIT) hosted by HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson and at which Thompson and National Health Information Technology Coordinator David Brailer, MD, PhD unveiled the nation’s first strategic framework report on a ten-year initiative to develop electronic health records and other uses of health information technology and advance HIT adoption.

The CCBH program is funded through a cooperative agreement with the Health Resources and Services Administration Office for the Advancement of Telehealth. The goal of CCBH is to implement activities on a national, regional and local basis that will lay the foundation for an interoperable, electronic, standards-based health information infrastructure to support patients, clinicians and those responsible for population health.

“HRSA is so pleased to be working with the Foundation for eHealth Initiative to carry out the CCBH program. We believe our joint efforts will make a significant contribution to the learnings about how community electronic health information exchange can work and how it can markedly improve health care delivery in communities across America” said Elizabeth Duke, PhD, Administrator for the Health Resources and Services Administration.

Janet M. Marchibroda, CEO of the eHealth Initiative and Executive Director of the Foundation for eHealth Initiative added, “the CCBH awards are historic because they represent “a first” in collaboration between the public and private sectors to support electronic health information exchange at the community level, at a time when there is strong and growing support amongst all healthcare stakeholders—both within the public and private sectors--for transforming our healthcare system from a paper-based enterprise to a modern, electronic model.”

David Brailer, MD, PhD the National Health Information Technology Coordinator spoke about the national importance of the CCBH program and its awardees, “CCBH is emblematic of the practical, action-oriented, results producing cooperation between the public and private sector that is required to advance electronic health information exchange and to inform national policy-making on HIT. Insights and evaluations from CCBH will also provide useful information, tools and resources to help reach President Bush’s goal to give a majority of Americans interoperable, electronic health records in a decade.”

The nine CCBH awardees were selected through a rigorous competitive process from among 134 community multi-stakeholder applicants in 42 states and the District of Columbia. Applicants were required to include in their proposals the involvement of at least three stakeholder groups, a clinical focus, the use of standards, and matching funds. CCBH awardees are:

Connecting Colorado - [Denver, CO]
Indiana Health Information Exchange (Central Indiana Healthcare Collaboration) - [Indianapolis, IN]
MA-SHARE MedsInfo e-Prescribing Initiative – [Waltham, MA]
MD/DC Collaborative for Healthcare Information Technology - [Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area]
Santa Barbara County Care Data Exchange – [Santa Barbara, CA]
Taconic Health Information Network and Community - [Fishkill, NY]
Tri-Cities TN-VA Care Data Exchange - [Kingsport, TN]
Whatcom County e-Prescribing Project - [Bellingham, WA]
Wisconsin Health Information Exchange (National Institute for Medical Informatics – Midwest) - [Milwaukee, WI]

“Today, CCBH is proud to announce its first nine community awardees who in the name of America’s patients and better healthcare are tackling the thorny technical, legal , financial and organizational change aspects of implementing electronic health information exchange. They are in the vanguard of the rapidly increasing number of communities throughout our nation that are mobilizing to engage in implementing this type of exchange” said John Glaser, PhD, President of the Foundation for eHealth Initiative and Vice President and Chief Information Officer of Partners HealthCare System.

CCBH awardees are pioneers of electronic health information exchange and represent a broad range of community project models. CCBH project participants are in both rural and urban areas, involve a myriad of stakeholder combinations and are in various stages of electronic health information exchange, from nascent to more mature projects.

CCBH awardees will test and evaluate strategies that will help address important challenges related to the use of HIT and the implementation of health information exchange including:

Mobilizing information to support the prescribing process;
Testing and evaluating financial incentives to support the use of HIT;
Exploring methods to leverage existing HIT applications to support public health surveillance and response;
Exploring methods to accurately link patient data;
Exploring methods to share information across multiple states and jurisdictions;
Furthering the implementation of community-wide health information exchange and putting tools and resources into the public domain.

“The findings from CCBH’s experiences and evaluations will be important on both a national and local level because CCBH provides a commonality in its projects together through the use of national data standards, while allowing local innovation and practice to flourish” Glaser said.

CCBH project findings will be disseminated as practical “how to” guidance for interested communities across the country through the Connecting Communities for Better Health Program’s Learning Network and Online Resource Center as well as its Learning Forums which create the opportunity for face-to-face dialogue and learning. “Through the Connecting Communities for Better Health programs, communities like ours will be able to share best practices and lessons learned, so that we can help each other be successful in sharing health information among systems and across institutions, in order to improve patient care and health outcomes” said Liesa Jenkins, Executive Director of Kingsport Tomorrow and Team Facilitator for the Tri-Cities TN/VA Care Data Exchange Project.

Lastly, said Marchibroda, ”CCBH will provide important feedback to the creation of a common framework and standards-based “network of networks” that safeguards privacy and is built incrementally”, as recommended in a report released last week by Connecting for Health, a public-private collaborative of over 100 public and private stakeholders designed to address barriers to electronic connectivity in healthcare. The collaborative is operated by the Markle Foundation and receives additional support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

About Connecting Communities for Better Health
The purpose of the Connecting Communities for Better Health Program is to provide seed funding and technical support to multi-stakeholder collaboratives within communities (both geographic and non-geographic) that are using electronic health information exchange and other IT tools to drive improvements in healthcare quality, safety and efficiency.

Funded under a cooperative agreement with the Health Resources and Services Administration Office for the Advancement of Telehealth, Connecting Communities for Better Health is implementing activities on a national, regional and local basis that will lay the foundation for an interconnected, electronic, standards-based health information infrastructure to support patients, clinicians and those responsible for population health. For more information on the Connecting Communities for Better Health program, go to www.ccbh.ehealthinitiative.org.

About the eHealth Initiative and its Foundation
The eHealth Initiative and the Foundation for eHealth Initiative are independent, non-profit affiliated organizations whose missions are the same: to drive improvement in the quality, safety, and efficiency of healthcare through information and information technology.

Both organizations are focused on engaging multiple and diverse stakeholders — including hospitals and other healthcare organizations, clinician groups, employers and purchasers, health plans, healthcare information technology organizations, manufacturers, public health agencies, academic and research institutions, and public sector stakeholders — to define and then implement specific actions that will address the quality, safety and efficiency challenges of our healthcare system through the use of interoperable information technology.
For more information on the eHealth Initiative and the Foundation for eHealth Initiative, go to www.ehealthinitiative.org.

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