The numbers are in and IHIT, with the help of Indiana’s five regionally-based Health Information Organizations (HIO’s), is making steady progress towards advancing sustainable, secure, standards-based health information exchange throughout Indiana’s rural communities and underserved populations.

Some highlights as of December 31, 2011:

• 101 of 123 acute hospitals have signed contracts with a HIO
• 2532 active participants  for directed exchange (Push)[includes unique ambulatory providers and individual labs]
• 5511 active participants for query exchange (Pull) )[includes unique ambulatory providers and individual labs]
• 13,365,891 transactions sent (Directed/Push) [includes lab results, discharge summaries, public health results, visit summaries]
• 1,205,317 transactions for patient record inquiries

As the numbers show, Indiana is well on its way towards securely moving electronic health data in a meaningful way to improve coordination among health providers to help them achieve improved health outcomes for their patients.

In the ONC's December 21st announcement, this new system of records will be used by the ONC and its partners to assess, evaluate, improve and publicize the effectiveness of ONC health IT grants to States and State-designated entities.

The datasets will enable the ONC to assess how well the grantees are doing compared to each other. The 62 regional health IT extension centers can also validate their progress reports and track performance improvements so they can receive payments.

ONC intends to collect data about physicians' health IT implementation, demographics and contact information from their National Provider Identifier (NPI).

“ONC partners and ONC grantees will only have access to data specifically pertaining to the achievement of that entity’s grant or contract purpose,” ONC said in its notice.

The system will not contain information about patients, ONC assured.

To read the ONC Action in its entirety, click here.

Private Health Information Exchanges are growing exponentially compared to the public HIE's