Seeking Sustainable RHIO Forest; View Obscured by Non-profit Trees by Martin Jensen

Health Affairs just published a study by a team of Harvard researchers that has cast a pall on the sustainability of Regional Health Information Organizations (also referred to as Health Information Exchanges). The report, The State Of Regional Health Information Organizations: Current Activities And Financing, by Julia Adler-Milstein, Andrew P. McAfee, David W. Bates, and Ashish K. Jha, seems to imply that the maladies suffered by RHIO efforts around the country might be fatal, at least if you read the many news stories and blogs that are talking about it.  I say "seems to" because our analysis suggests that the industry echosphere is still missing quite a bit of the big picture.  Let's take this step by step, starting with the Harvard study and moving into the invisible economy and the nature of the RHIO challenge.

First, the "scary facts" presented by the researchers:

• 25% of previously-listed RHIOs seem to be "defunct"
• Only 20% of the remainder reported exchanging significant volumes of clinical data
• Most of the data they were exchanging falls into the categories of lab results, inpatient data and medication history
• A majority reported receiving in-kind donations, about half reported grants or financial contributions and slightly less than half reported no financial contributions

Read the rest at the Health 2.0 Blog