During the last decade, there has been an emerging consensus regarding the value of HIE services to providers, patients, payors, and other stakeholders. This consensus was supported in 2009 with the passage of the ARRA HITECH act which incentivizes the meaningful use of healthcare IT, especially as it relates to the exchange of data across the continuum of care and value chain.
MHC is focused on offering participants the highest available return on their health information exchange investments. Our bottom-up, incremental, value-driven approach allows our stakeholders to participate at their own pace and to begin to realize significant returns early in the investment cycle. The specific benefits for hospitals/health systems to join MHC include:
- Leverage joint buying power of MHC to license Medicity software and services at significantly reduced rates while leveraging the lessons learned and best practices of other organizations who have implemented and deployed the platform previously. Investments will be further leveraged as the same platform can be used to support both Enterprise and Community health information exchange needs.
- Gain exclusive connectivity with MHC’s Provider Network – Participating provider organizations and other Members leveraging the MHC platform via a single MHC-wide Record Locator Service and Community Master Person Index.
- Common standards-based gateway to/from the Michigan MiHIN Shared Services platform representing a single integration point with state government systems as well as the National Health Information Network (NHIN) (This significant investment will not need to be developed by each Member/ Participant individually nor multiple times to the extent they have hospitals in geographies with distinct HIEs).
- Single centralized help desk support and operational expertise for participating provider organizations.
- Centralized configuration support for MHC clinical messaging solutions and infrastructure components – Members send MHC their data and MHC makes sure it gets where it needs to go per policy, both locally and to the state (e.g., MCIR, MSDSS).
- Local deployment and technical platform development and enhancement resources for both hospital and community-based solutions.
- Reduced interface costs through MHC negotiated discounts and central integration hubs with major EMR vendors.
- EMR vendor neutrality. MHC does not have or promote its own EMR solution and is focused on integrating with any/all products across the state, therefore it is not competing with individual hospital physician affiliate programs.
- More significant state and national influence/leverage through representation and leadership on the MiHIN Shared Services Board and other state-wide initiatives.
- Participate in unique joint grant and pilot project opportunities to reduce cost and improve care in our communities (e.g., ED-to-ED data sharing, etc)
