HHS Announces Funding for Health Information Exchanges to Support Public Health Agencies – STAR HIE Program Funds Five Organizations to Improve Interoperability of Health Data

HHS Announces Funding for Health Information Exchanges to Support Public Health Agencies – STAR HIE Program Funds Five Organizations to Improve Interoperability of Health Data

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The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) today announced today five cooperative agreements to health information exchange organizations (HIEs) to help support state and local public health agencies in their efforts to respond to public health emergencies, including disasters and pandemics such as COVID-19.

The HHS Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) is administering $2.5 million in funding from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Acts (CARES Act) signed by President Trump on March 27, 2020. The funding will support local health information exchanges (HIEs) under the Strengthening the Technical Advancement and Readiness of Public Health Agencies via Health Information Exchange (STAR HIE) Program.

Each of the five recipients will work to improve HIE services so that public health agencies can better access, share, and use health information during public health emergencies. These efforts will also support communities that are disproportionately impacted by COVID-19.

“Health information exchanges have long served important roles in their states and regions by helping health data flow to treat patients,” said Don Rucker, MD, national coordinator for health information technology. “These STAR HIEs will help public health officials make real-time decisions during emergencies like fires, floods, and now, the COVID-19 pandemic.’

The five HIEs, each awarded two-year cooperative agreements, are:

• Georgia Health Information Network, Inc. (GaHIN)
  Georgia Health Information Network  will support the Georgia Department of Public Health and Georgia Department of Community Health to better access, share, and use electronic health information, especially data from populations underserved and/or disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. This will include increasing the reporting to a state-wide COVID-19 registry and expanding public health reporting and data enrichment for providers not connected to GaHIN.
• Health Current (Arizona)
  Health Current (Arizona)  will support the Arizona Department of Health Services by improving the timeliness, accuracy, and completeness of hospital reporting of key COVID-19 healthcare data, including facility hospitalization metrics, personal protective equipment (PPE) inventories, and ventilator inventory and utilization. Health Current will also seek to reduce hospitals and health system burden related to state and federal reporting requirements by using the HIE as a data intermediary.
• HealthShare Exchange of Southeastern Pennsylvania (HSX)
  HealthShare Exchange  will modernize the region’s pandemic response with the use of automated application programming interfaces (APIs), supporting the Philadelphia Department of Public Health, the Pennsylvania Department of Health, the Philadelphia Office of Emergency Management, and other county departments of health. HSX will also facilitate public health agency use of the Delaware Valley COVID-19 Registry, and create new clinical data connections based on public health agency priorities.
• Kansas Health Information Network, Inc. (KHIN) d/b/a KONZA
  KONZA  will utilize health information exchange data to establish COVID registries for public health agencies, enhance traditional lab messages with HIE data to support COVID electronic lab reporting, and increase HIE participation for organizations providing care to large numbers of COVID patients.
• Texas Health Services Authority
  The Texas Health Services Authority , in partnership with HASA, a regional HIE covering multiple regions in Texas, a local hospital partner, and Audacious Inquiry, will conduct a proof-of-concept pilot to demonstrate real-time, automated exchange of hospital capacity and other situational awareness data through APIs using HL7® Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR®). This improved functionality will not only simplify hospitals’ public health reporting, but will also support the Texas Department of State Health Services, local health departments, emergency management agencies, and health care organizations across the state.

These five awards represent a range of activities across different geographic regions of the country. The cooperative agreements will include cross-recipient collaboration to leverage their collective expertise and ensure the sharing of implementation experience gained from the program. This will bolster the likelihood of success and enable better replicability of the projects throughout the country.