OptimumInsight explains SHARE

Axolotl HIE facilitates sharing of electronic health information among health care providers across Arkansas.

The Arkansas Office of Health Information Technology (OHIT) announced OptumInsight’s health information exchange (HIE) technology has been selected to build the infrastructure for the State Health Alliance for Records Exchange (SHARE), Arkansas’s statewide health information exchange.

Ray Scott, who was appointed by Governor Mike Beebe to serve as the state coordinator for health information technology and directs the activities of the OHIT said; “The selection of OptumInsight and their Axolotl HIE solution represents a major milestone in Arkansas’s efforts to expand the use of electronic health information that will benefit patients, care providers and payers. OptumInsight’s extensive experience in enabling the exchange of medical information about patients, who are treated by multiple unaffiliated health care providers, means better coordinated care and ultimately better health for Arkansans.”

OHIT is the state-designated entity responsible for establishing the State Health Alliance for Records Exchange and for coordinating health information technology throughout the state. Through the use of federal and state funding, OHIT and SHARE’s mission is to improve the quality of health for Arkansans by making the delivery of health care services more efficient and affordable, while improving patient safety. The state received $7.9 million in funding as part of the State Health Information Cooperative Agreement Program made available through the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC).

Using OptumInsight’s Axolotl HIE solution, SHARE will create a secure infrastructure to connect disparate health information systems to facilitate the exchange of information with existing community and private HIEs as well as ambulatory electronic health record systems (EHR’s) across the state. Participating physicians, authorized health services professionals, and hospital facilities will have the ability to exchange patients’ clinical information securely and access up-to-date and historical medical information at the point of care. This information may include the patient’s relevant clinical care summaries of diagnoses, treatments, lab test results, allergies, radiology images and medications from all care providers connected to SHARE.

SHARE will be implemented in phases. Phase 1 will provide secure messaging, which will facilitate and expand the secure, electronic movement and use of health information between unaffiliated health care providers. In Phase II, SHARE will evolve into a more robust health information exchange, giving all participating health care providers the ability to share patient information among hospitals, physicians and public health entities connected to the exchange. The benefits will include accurate and timely patient health care information available to care providers at the point of care, reduction of duplicate tests and medical errors to ultimately deliver safer, more affordable health care. Additional benefits to the patients will include electronic access to their own health information to promote more patient involvement in their care.

Through collaboration with the Arkansas Foundation for Medical Care and its division, HITArkansas, which serves as the Arkansas Regional Extension Center (REC), OHIT will provide strategies for assisting health care providers to quickly reach stage 1 meaningful use, as well as developing the infrastructure needed by labs, e-lab orders and structured lab results. Recognizing that physician adoption is the key to any successful HIE, OptumInsight partnered with the Arkansas Foundation for Medical Care and Oleen Pinnacle Healthcare Consulting, a national HIT healthcare consulting firm located in Little Rock, Ark. Oleen Pinnacle brings more than 20 years of HIT experience in hospital and ambulatory health information technology and most recent success with state and regional HIE deployments.

“The selection of OptumInsight to build the infrastructure for Arkansas’s health information exchange is a tremendous step in improving health care through health information technology,” said Ray Hanley, president and CEO of the Arkansas Foundation for Medical Care, the parent company of HITArkansas, the state’s Regional Extension Center. “OHIT has been a great partner in our efforts to aid health care providers in the transition to electronic health records, and we look forward to the next steps in that process.”

“OptumInsight is excited to work with the Arkansas Office of Health Information Technology to deploy a complete HIE infrastructure and solution that will make health care more efficient and affordable for care providers and patients, all while improving patient safety,” said Glenn Keet, senior vice president of business development for OptumInsight. “OHIT will deploy a point to point network using Direct protocols as an adjunct to Axolotl’s Clinical Messaging® between physicians and patients, and will also have the leading solution for enabling authorized access to complete medical records for patients regardless of where the patients have received their care.”

The Arkansas Office of Health Information Technology is OptumInsight’s tenth statewide HIE customer, after Health Information Network of Arizona, Michigan Health Information Network Shared Services in Michigan, HealthInsight in Nevada, Health Information Partnership for Tennessee (HIP TN), among other leading statewide (Idaho, Maryland, Nebraska, Utah and in partnership with Affiliated Computer Services Inc. Kentucky) Health Information Exchanges that have selected OptumInsight's Axolotl HIE solutions. Today, Axolotl HIE is connecting more than 55,000 physicians, 165,000 healthcare professionals, 375 hospitals, and 26 regional health information organizations (RHIOs) - including 5 Beacon Communities as part of the Beacon Community Cooperative Agreement Program.