State-Level Health Information Exchange Consensus Project

The AHIMA Foundation initiated the State-Level Health Information Exchange (HIE) Consensus Project (the Project) in 2006 with cooperative agreement funding from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) to guide field research and contribute to analysis and recommendations regarding HIE development across states.  What has resulted from the Project and continues to evolve is a body of knowledge about the emerging organizational functions, practices and key factors related to the success of statewide HIE implementation and sustainability.  Included in this body of knowledge is a series of reports, issue briefs, commentaries, presentations, and inventories of state-level HIE profiles and statewide HIE plans.

In 2008 the Project focused its attention on establishing its Leadership Forum - a community of practice support network designed to bring key state-level HIE players together to leverage the power of collective experience, resources, and shared learning.  As the Project’s scope of work has grown to encompass providing technical assistance for all US states and territories receiving HIT cooperative agreements from ONC under the federal State HIE Program, the Leadership Forum has grown to include representation from all of these states and territories. Now the focus of Project activity, the Forum is supported by two listservs - one exclusively for Leadership Forum participants and another that serves to inform and bring together the broader state HIE community.  The Project also maintains a dedicated Forum website and the State HIE Toolkit, which serves as a practical State HIE guide and resource clearinghouse to support the Project’s technical assistance efforts (http://statehieresources.org/).

For questions about this project, please contact Michelle Dougherty, Director of Research and Development, at michelle.dougherty@ahimafoundation.org or (312) 233-1914.