Michigan Health Connect (MHC) is a Regional Health Information Organization (RHIO) that facilitates and manages Health Information Exchange (HIE) services in the State of Michigan.
MHC was founded in 2009 when 3 independent health systems in West Michigan (Spectrum Health, Trinity Health, and Metro Health) realized they had licensed the same vendor’s clinical messaging technology and had plans to deploy that technology to many of the same community provider organizations. Agreeing to collaborate and not compete on clinical data exchange, the health systems began meeting to determine what they could do together in conjunction with their vendor, Medicity. In the subsequent weeks, both Lakeland Health System and Northern Michigan Regional Health System were added to the collaborative discussions, each also independently licensing Medicity’s clinical messaging platform.
After collaborating for many months and with good progress and momentum developed related to common robust health information exchange in their respective communities, in March of 2010 MHC was formally launched as a charitable [509(a)2] non-profit corporation in Michigan.
Around this same time, two additional major health systems in the state joined MHC and began participating on the Board – McLaren Healthcare and Ascension Health representing its five ministries across the state. Collectively, these seven anchor organizations committed significant resources toward the development of MHC and funded the organization through its first fiscal year (ending June 30, 2011). Beaumont Health System was added as the eighth Charter Board Member in May 2011 adding a further significant leadership presence in southeast Michigan.
MHC believes that investments in HIE technologies can deliver significant quality, safety, and efficiency benefits to providers, patients, payors, and communities if those investments are coordinated and focused on delivering incremental, value-added services to participants throughout the healthcare value chain.
Mission
To advance the delivery and coordination of health care across Michigan through collaboratively leveraging information technology and clinical data exchange.
Vision
To innovatively expand the strategic investments participating health systems have and are making in clinical messaging and data exchange to significantly increase the value delivered to the broad provider community.
