LITTLE ROCK — The state of Arkansas awarded a contract this week to establish its State Health Alliance for Records Exchange - a digital infrastructure that would allow a diverse group of healthcare providers in the state, and eventually across the nation, access to a patient’s electronic medical record.
The Arkansas Office of Health Information Technology awarded a $3.18 million contract to Optum Insight to build a statewide system.
The one-year agreement comes with a six-year extension option. The Prairie Eden, Minn., based company will connect providers such as hospitals, nursing homes and physician practices through its Axolotl Health Information Exchange Solution infrastructure, the office said.
“Optum Insight’s extensive experience in enabling the exchange of medical information about patients who are treated by multiple, unaffiliated healthcare providers means better coordinated care and ultimately better health for Arkansans,” Ray Scott, state coordinator for health-information technology, said in a news release.
Arkansas represents the business’s 10th statewide health-information exchange customer. Other contracts have been executed with Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Tennessee, Idaho, Maryland, Nebraska, Utah and Kentucky, according to the news release.
A health-information exchange is the transmission of medical data between health information organizations and government agencies. Exchanges are being created according to national standards administered through the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology in the federal Department of Health and Human Services.
Related funding for exchanges comes from the 2009 passage of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, which was enacted as part of the federal stimulus plan.
The act seeking to promote the adoption of so-called health information technology such as electronic health records has its roots in a 2004 White House initiative. President George W. Bush envisioned that would provide all Americans with an electronic medical record by 2014, and would create a common nationwide standard in health-information technology to access those records.
The Office of the National Coordinator distributed an estimated $564 million in federal funds in 2010 and 2011 to develop exchange infrastructures across the country. Arkansas received $7.91 million of that amount.
The state’s health-information exchange will be completed in a two-phase effort, the state office said.
Business, Pages 29 on 02/11/2012