Liability Coverage for Regional Health Information Organizations: Lessons from AHRQ-Funded State and Regional Demonstration Projects in Health Information Technology and Other Community Efforts

摘要

Regional health information organizations (RHIOs) bring together health care stakeholders within a defined geographic area, and govern health information exchange (HIE) among these stakeholders for the purpose of improving health care in that community. RHIO stakeholders may include hospitals, primary care physicians, specialty physicians, laboratories, radiology centers, and health plans--all of which consolidate efforts to facilitate HIE. The eHealth Initiative (eHI) has developed a framework to assess and track the growth of RHIOs and has identified seven stages of development. There are four pre-operational stages: recognizing the need for HIE (Stage 1), getting organized (Stage 2), transferring vision (Stage 3), and getting implementation underway (Stage 4). In addition, there are three fully operational stages of development: transferring data among stakeholders (Stage 5), transferring data based on a sustainable business plan (Stage 6), and finally, demonstrating expansion of the organization (Stage 7).