Last week, Healthcare Innovation’s David Raths reported that The Florida Health Information Exchange, governed by the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA), has selected nonprofit CRISP Shared Services (CSS) as its data exchange technology platform. 

Starting July 1, Raths reported, the new network will go live with a significant expansion of participating organizations, including a nearly 5 percent increase in hospital bed coverage, representing nearly 3,500 more beds, and a nearly 200 percent increase in skilled nursing facilities participating with the network.

Healthcare Innovation spoke with Mary C. Mayhew, president and CEO of the Florida Hospital Association, to discuss further.

Could you talk about the new features being offered by CRISP?

I'm going to speak broadly to what this means for Florida hospitals. I want to start with that Florida never truly implemented a comprehensive healthcare information exchange (HIE). There have been a number of states over the last 20-plus years that have implemented systems where physicians have real-time access to comprehensive clinical information.

What Florida has had is an event notification system for admissions, transfers, and discharges. That's been valuable when you're trying to coordinate the warm handoff, making sure that a patient who's discharged from the hospital is getting that timely follow-up in the community with a physician. When a patient has been admitted to the hospital, the physician practices and the insurer are notified.

What I am hopeful for in this new approach with CRISP, is that we are going to have broader access to much more robust clinical information. One of the frustrating aspects of healthcare for consumers is that they're getting into the specialist's office and having to repeat all their healthcare information, or carry a disk of their latest scan. And in this day and age, how do we ensure that that is at the fingertips of clinicians? That's what I'm hopeful for.

Florida has a much larger population of individuals over the age of 65. We have a baby boomer generation that is rapidly aging. One of the areas that is often most fragmented is when individuals are moving between a hospital, assisted living, and a skilled nursing facility. And there's a disconnect with the data and information that would better support the continuity of care. Again, I'm really optimistic that this expansion of the HIE will help to improve that care coordination.

Could you talk about the role of the HIE in the rural health transformation effort?

Rural health transformation has often been characterized nationally as helping to financially support struggling rural hospitals; that really isn't the focus of the rural healthcare transformation grant. That is focused on broadening access in rural areas to comprehensive care coordination, primary care, prenatal access, and getting upstream so that individuals have improved access. When individuals in rural areas need access to specialists who may not be located in their area, the electronic medical record used by that rural provider may differ from the one used by the specialist or a larger urban hospital. This could absolutely bridge that gap with access to clinical data. CRISP and this expansion of the state's HIE could absolutely address that challenge.

Do you anticipate or want more behavioral health, post-acute providers, and even community organizations to participate in HIE?

One of the biggest challenges of health information exchange is the expense of connectivity. It's often the reason that you have significant consolidation in healthcare. Investing in an electronic medical record is hundreds of millions of dollars for hospitals. Smaller providers, like behavioral health, are often under-resourced post-acute providers. They simply do not have the resources to make the kinds of investments in health information technology.

I want to see the state become very creative in helping to support that connectivity for smaller providers. If they're not connected, everything I've said about the system's potential value in improving the delivery and coordination of care will be lost.

I think it really is leaning into making this resonate- how frustrating it is for consumers to feel like they are constantly repeating over and over their own clinical information, or that the test results, the lab, the scan are not readily accessible to other providers who need to review them. That's what we're talking about here. That's what's so critically important about this new direction.

Craig Behm, president and CEO of CSS, added the following statement regarding Florida hospital participation in HIE: “While we do not currently have 100 percent hospital participation, we have already seen tremendous success in expanding the network’s hospital bed coverage across the state as we prepare for the July 1 transition, and have seen strong engagement from remaining hospitals. We anticipate our network growth will significantly expand following the cutover, and we, alongside our partners, are working tirelessly to achieve total participation across the state once the vendor transition is complete.”