Steadfast Commitment to HIE Opens the Door for Health Equity

The following is a guest article by Robert Horst, Senior Vice President of Partner Engagement at Audacious Inquiry, a PointClickCare Company

Collaboration in healthcare delivers remarkable outcomes. Such was the case at the first ever collaborative conference for health information exchange (HIE), interoperability, public health, and health equity. The Civitas Networks for Health 2022 Annual Conference, a Collaboration with the DirectTrust Summit, brought together HIEs, state agencies and interoperability experts nationwide. 

The four-day summit focused on the evolving role of HIE, new interoperability successes and the valuable implications of harnessing data to advance health equity. We heard from executives across the health information exchange ecosystem including keynotes by Rishi Manchanda, MD, MPH, by the CEO at HealthBegins and Steven Posnack, MS, MHS, Deputy National Coordinator at The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC).

One of my most important takeaways from the event was simply a reminder of the steadfast commitments, across every corner of this tight-knit community, to harness healthcare data in pursuit of better patient outcomes and reduced healthcare costs. This includes HIEs not only aggregating and sharing data, but also ensuring data is correctly presented to providers within the clinical workflow. 

Healthcare professionals that became involved in HIEs upwards of 15 years ago continue to advance technology solutions in support of health equity, public health, and connected communities. In addition to this important reminder, here are three insights for HIEs and health system leadership from the Civitas for Health 2022 event. 

Embrace an Equity-First Mindset

Setting the stage for the health equity theme of the conference, Rishi Manchanda outlined his vision to help the nation build an “equity infrastructure” addressing structural drivers of health equity. 

Manchanda cited the adage, “Give a man a fish, feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime.” Continuing to elaborate with the metaphor of the pond, Manchanda highlighted the complexity of equity posing the questions: “Why not teach women, what if the pond is polluted, and what if a community is historically denied access to fishing equipment?”   

We’ve watched momentum build for the collection of data by HIEs to advance health equity across their communities. If we can connect this health equity-first mindset by expanding the use of outbound admission, discharge, transfer (ADT) notifications, we will supplement existing healthcare coordination. Many meetings held by our team during the summit focused on new strategies to integrate health equity data at the forefront – not as a secondary technology tactic. 

Establish Trust, Yield Critical Data

Several of the event’s panels cited case studies and lessons learned throughout the pandemic. For example, during the early days of the pandemic, a lot of health records excluded race and ethnicity data. We now recognize the major advantage of collecting this type of data. 

Speakers also shared lessons learned in how to break down barriers for securing this information from patients. This included such ideas as putting questions into context and articulating why providers need to understand race data as part of the overall care coordination landscape.

During a panel discussion highlighting the ROI of culturally tailored outreach, SameSky Health’s founder and CEO Abner Mason, Manifest MedEx CEO Erica Galvez and Lakshimi Dhanvanthari, MD, discussed how a health plan engaged SameSky Health to improve COVID vaccination uptake. The organization initiated focus groups to better understand barriers such as questions people encountered when they went to receive their vaccines that deterred them from moving forward. 

Based on insights from focus groups, SameSky incorporated the use of text messaging and personalization to increase vaccination rates in targeted communities by 18.4 percent on average.

Plan and Operationalize for Expanded Data Interoperability

Another area we’re excited about as we work with our partners is assessing data quality to help advance data interoperability. Beyond our analysis of where the data shows up and its impact on connected care, a core part of our work addresses how the health IT industry can operationalize an expanded data set for better healthcare interoperability. 

During his keynote session, “Health Equity by Design,” Steven Posnack called out key considerations for HIEs’ existing opportunities and requisite supportive interoperability infrastructure. As part of Posnack’s “whole stream thinking” approach, he recommended initially investigating which data sets are collected and then moving into standardization. 

Other aspects of the approach included subsequent steps for HIEs to take, such as reviewing how the data is collected, and the importance of literacy, workflows, technology, training, primary use, re-use, and evaluation. 

Finally, next steps to engage with the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA) and Quality Health Information Networks (QHINs) were top of mind for attendees and vendors alike. As the entire industry anticipates the rollout of TEFCA later this year, it is important to engage in a rigorous planning process around how relevant entities will (or will not) engage in data exchange enabled by TEFCA. 

   

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