Effective methods for interstate collaboration in health information exchange. State Health Policy Consortium

Title XIII of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), commonly known as the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, codified the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) and provided substantial financial support for State and regional health information technology (IT) and health information exchange (HIE) activities. These funds also established the State Health Policy Consortium (SHPC) in 2010 to provide States with resources needed to develop solutions to challenges preventing or impeding HIE across State lines. ONC contracted with RTI International to administer the SHPC project.

The methods used to establish, fund, support, and manage consortiums have proven particularly effective for HIE pilot and demonstration projects and provide a structured yet flexible framework that can identify and bring high-value projects online rapidly. The HIE environment requires flexibility because the challenges and opportunities it presents evolve rapidly. As solutions are implemented and exchange expands, new opportunities and tipping points emerge. The flexible SHPC model allowed ONC to take advantage of these opportunities as they emerged to make rapid progress.

This report describes the methods the SHPC used to support collaboration between States regarding HIE, enumerates the benefits of this methodology and the conditions under which it succeeds, and discusses how it can be employed to further support HIE and other challenges requiring multistate collaboration.