Health information exchanges (HIEs) are scrambling to respond to COVID-19, as are all parts of the healthcare delivery system. Many have proven to be ready and invaluable assets, but significant variation among the states’ exchanges means that some are more prepared to assist than others.
The most capable exchanges are quickly deploying toolsets and sharing data streams that are greatly valued by their state’s public health departments and healthcare leaders. These successful models should be adopted across the country and scaled up to improve disease surveillance, shared reporting and care team engagement, but it will require changes to the way many are organized and operated.
How HIEs Are Being Applied During the Pandemic
A hallmark of the COVID-19 response thus far has been the need for accurate information on the disease progression, both for individual patients and at the population level. Health information exchanges are responding by using their well-established information networks in new ways. For example, they are:
- Analyzing COVID-19 testing volume and results trends by ZIP code or census block
- Calculating demographic trends, including race and ethnicity data, for individuals being tested, for those with a positive diagnosis, and for fatalities
- Capturing relevant comorbidities to quickly communicate to care managers and to clinicians in the emergency department
- Enhancing contact tracing capabilities with up-to-date contact information from recent healthcare encounters and by routing notifications to case managers of new encounters
- Providing a mechanism for credentialed clinicians to order tests at drive-through locations
- Serving as a single, unified source of lab testing data for the state’s COVID-19 management effort
- Tracking and disseminating real-time hospital volumes and resource utilization
These and other capabilities are accomplished through partnerships with public health agencies by combining the clinical and claims data available through exchanges with the reportable conditions and other mandatory reporting data available to public health officials.
