Trends for HIEs in 2020

By Kelly Thompson, CEO, SHIEC
Twitter: @SHIEClive
Twitter: @HIEforMe

The Strategic Health Information Exchange Collaborative (SHIEC) is the national collaborative representing health information exchanges (HIEs) and their strategic business and technology partners. SHIEC’s mission is to; educate public and private entities regarding the benefits, functions and roles of HIEs; promote business conditions, tools and legislation to improve the effectiveness and sustainability of HIEs; and achieve economies of scale while supporting members’ autonomy and ability to serve local needs. As we approach the end of the year, I see the following dominating the headlines for HIEs in 2020:

  • Continued growth of value-based care – which requires more/better care coordination – It is easy to forecast that more providers will be engaged in value-based care in 2020. This will require the increased care coordination and connections that HIEs provide in their communities. Also, successful value-based requires the integration of behavioral health information and providers – an area of growth for HIEs in 2020.
  • Social determinants of health – There has been significant growth in the collection of social determinants of care data in communities across the nation. SHIEC has a key committee that have been advancing the gathering of social determinants data and 2020 will see the sharing of social determinants data through HIEs.
  • HIEs assisting with hurricanes & climate disasters – It is a good bet severe events such as hurricanes may displace populations and separate patients from their health records. HIEs have assisted with these climate disasters before and it is likely that these protectors of patient health records will assist again in 2020.
  • Advancement of Interoperability – Technology makes interoperability possible and this will increase in 2020. But interoperability cannot be achieve by technology alone. In addition to the data acquisition and data access that makes exchange possible, episode-based alerts and processes like data quality and patient matching put meaningful data in the hands of clinicians when and where it is needed.