SacValley MedShare Expands
Rural Health Information Exchange
History
Originally, a 7-county, community-based non-profit Health Information Organization (HIO), SacValley MedShare (SVMS) was formed in 2012 with a goal of increasing access to health information across a diverse and scattered population, in order to improve patient care and patient safety, as well as reducing unnecessary duplication of procedures and investigations. The organization got its start in the counties of Butte, Colusa, Glenn, Plumas, Sutter, Tehama, and Yuba.
 In an interview with Charles Kitzman, SacValley MedShare Board Member and CIO of Shasta Community Health Center, CCRHI learns about the recent expansion of SacValley MedShare and the impact that will have on health care delivery.
How did you first become involved with SacValley MedShare?
One year after SacValley MedShare was formed, a group in Shasta County assembled, called North State Health Connect, and I was a member of this stakeholder group's steering committee. At a conference in Santa Rosa in 2014, I had dinner with Jim Hauenstein, then Executive Director of SVMS. We discussed what a strategic expansion might look like. Over the next year the SVMS Board, their vendor ICA, and North State Health Connect joined efforts and North State Heath Connect was granted 6 seats on the SVMS governance board. This allowed for the large-scale expansion of SVMS into the 5 northern counties of Lassen, Modoc, Shasta, Siskiyou and Trinity. With the expansion of new members, SVMS now includes 4 A cute-Care Hospitals, 5 Critical Access Hospitals, 9 health centers and rural health clinics, and 6 other provider entities in the 12-county region, which serves a population of over 800,000 people, spread over more than 284,000 square miles of territory.
How is your involvement with SacValley MedShare changing practice and delivery strategies at your organization?
Well, so far we’re simply trying to do away with our faxing service in favor of using the Direct Trust network – a secure email style platform for sharing information. This requires partners in the community willing to do the same. I’m happy to report that we have been able to engage several health care operations in the community to use Direct and I think it can quickly become a useful alternative to fax by the end of 2016. Next steps will be to make our Chart notes, Labs, and Diagnostic information available to others as close to real time as possible. This will help the local emergency rooms tremendously as it should minimize risk, eliminate duplicative efforts and make care more efficient for patients.
In what way will SacValley MedShare impact healthcare delivery in the community?
If we get this right it should help our medical community achieve the triple aim of health care reform. Namely, reduced costs, better outcomes and better patient experiences. One of the many reasons health care is costly in America is that information is too often in silos and doesn’t travel well with the patient. Consequently, unnecessary labs and diagnostics are ordered. Health Information Exchange (HIE) can help cut these costs by providing timely and accurate information at point of care – a rarity in the existing medical field. When enough providers participate, they can have information from multiple sources at their fingertips and this should result in more informed decision making and an elimination of unnecessary delays in care.
What will be the most significant benefits to providers and patients?
Providers will benefit from greater access to information regardless of location of service and patients will benefit from greater coordination of care. When you consider the current state of things, it’s not hard to imagine the improvements that shared data can bring. I’m excited that our community has chosen to make this a priority and though there is much to be done, I’m confident we’re on the right path.
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