By - The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has announced $2.5 million in funding for health information exchanges (HIEs), aiming to support state and local public health agencies.
The organization said the funding would strengthen HIEs and public health agencies, ultimately helping communities prevent, respond, and recover from public health emergencies, such as COVID-19.
“The funding opportunity we announced today will invest in infrastructure and data services for HIEs that provide critical real-time information to communities at the frontlines of responding to the COVID-19 pandemic,” Don Rucker, MD, national coordinator at ONC, said in a statement.
Under the Strengthening the Technical Advancement and Readiness of Public Health Agencies via Health Information Exchange (STAR HIE) Program, HHS will award up to five HIE organizations using the $2.5 million from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act). ONC plans to award these five recipients up to $500,000 each.
The STAR HIE Program’s objective is to reinforce state and local HIE infrastructure to give public health agencies increased access, enhanced interoperability, and extensive use of patient data. Additionally, it aims to support communities that were hit hard by COVID-19.
“State and local HIEs play a unique role in their communities by uniting health information from many different sites of service, including providers, hospitals, nursing homes, clinical laboratories, and public health departments, making them a natural fit to deliver innovative, local ‘last mile’ approaches to strengthen our overall public health response,” Rucker explained.
Using the funding, recipients aim to improve HIE services, such as data services, connectivity services, and services that enhance public health registries.
To receive the funding, HHS said applicants must propose activities aiming to benefit public health agencies. These proposed activities should help public health agencies be more capable of responding to public health disasters, such as COVID-19.
HHS wrote applicants must explain how they would launch services to enable or increase the use of HIE systems, including communities that face social determinants of health (SDOH). Those who apply must also describe how their actions address those communities facing COVID-19 challenges as it relates to age, race, ethnicity, disability, and sex.
HHS said the objective is to enhance the public health understanding of how the pandemic has impacted a variety of communities and boost the way these public health agencies can respond to extreme public health crises.
This move comes as a part of previous HHS efforts to address public health reporting.
In June, HHS announced standardized COVID-19 data reporting to ensure public health officials have access to comprehensive and accurate patient data to fight the pandemic.
The additional guidance includes information about gender, race, and zip code. This guidance was released after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) noted an increase in minority coronavirus cases since March. HHS said detailed demographic data is required to gauge state hot spots and help state leaders make easier decisions.
“HHS and the entire Trump Administration are deeply concerned that COVID-19 is having a disproportionate impact on certain demographics, including racial minorities and older Americans,” HHS Secretary, Alex Azar, said at the time.
“High quality data is at the core of any effective public health response, and standardized, comprehensive reporting of testing information will give our public health experts better data to guide decisions at all levels throughout the crisis.”
These requirements sought to give researchers better surveillance and information to monitor COVID-19, such as enhanced monitoring, increased epidemiologic case investigations, more accurate contact tracing, increased use of testing resources, and assisting supply chain issues, HHS claimed.
Furthermore, HHS said when possible, all patient data should be collected using ONC certified health IT and HIEs. The organization explained the data should be structured with the US Core Data for Interoperability, and all data exchange should utilize HL7 electronic laboratory reporting (ELR) implementation guides, when available.
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August 13, 2020 at 12:30AM
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