Health Information Exchange offers the potential to improve patient safety, ensure that physicians have the tools and information they need at the point of care to optimally treat their patients, enable better coordination of care among different providers, support public health reporting, reduce paper inefficiencies and shorten the time it takes to accurately make diagnoses and provide appropriate treatment. Improving the overall quality and competitiveness of region’s healthcare environment will eventually lead to greater economic development opportunity for the entire community.  

Financial benefits

In addition to the improvements for patient safety and better care, the MiHIA Business and Finance team estimates a potential community benefit in excess of $40M+/year, due to greater efficiency and reduction of unnecessary services.

Technology Focus

Based on the input of the Clinical Advisory Group, the Technical Advisory Group reviewed current literature and industry best practices, examined successful and failed HIEs, and identified common HIE models to make technology recommendations:

• Since our local clinical priorities align with the national experience, MiHIA should attempt to utilize the published literature and recommended best practices to guide HIE implementation activities. 

• After the review of the national best practices, an HIE model emphasizing shared electronic clinical transactions was determined to be the bestplace to start.