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That action on the part of Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania, Kaiser Permanente in California, the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, Intermountain Healthcare in Utah, and Group Health Cooperative in Washington state-coupled with the release last year of $547 million in federal grants for state HIEs-may finally be enough to push the promise of the HIE into reality. The question is, will the reality be sustainable? And furthermore, what separates a successful HIE from a failed one?

To find out, we turned to several experts in the field and canvassed recent research on existing HIEs to identify the pillars needed to support the structure.

Here's what we found.

Lately, there has been a great deal of attention paid to Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs). And for good reason: the health care industry’s strides toward adopting the ACO model are being driven by the desire to reduce Medicare costs by improving coordination and continuity of care. Applying the ACO model can help improve the quality of care for a specific population of patients while reducing costs over time. This trend may eventually help push the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and its providers a step closer to value-based purchasing of healthcare.
 

The inclusion of the concept of accountable care organizations (ACOs) in the comprehensive federal healthcare reform legislation passed last March could well prove to be a watershed development both for healthcare in the U.S., and for the healthcare IT sector. Indeed, say industry experts, the success of ACOs-which will collectively accept payment for coordinated care for patients, and receive back from the Medicare program a portion of the cost savings they achieve-will rely on equal doses of strategic thinking and planning on the one hand, and intensive data management and analysis capabilities on the other. 

Sandlot's health information exchange hits its goal of 1.5 million EMRs in Texas to work toward continuity of care. 

Sandlot, a health care IT company in Fort Worth, Texas, has announced that its SandlotConnect Health Information Exchange database of Electronic Medical Records now includes 1.5 million patient records.  

HIE databases allow physicians, hospitals and clinics to share medical records from various providers and public health authorities to analyze population data to improve community health.