Founded in 2001, the Rhode Island Quality Institute (RIQI) is a collaboration of leaders who share a vision for substantively improving the health care system in Rhode Island, including consumers, advocacy groups, hospitals, health insurers, employers, academia, nursing and long term care facilities, and state government. Since 2004, the RI Department of Health (HEALTH) and RIQI have worked closely together on a demonstration project to implement infrastructure for health information exchange in the state; the strategic and operational plans assembled as part of the cooperative agreement will build upon this pilot to establish a long-term, strategic platform for HIE in Rhode Island.
When fully operational and rolled out to providers across RI, currentcare (RI???s HIE) will provide clinicians with a longitudinal medical record of patients that have elected to participate. Access to this information will improve the quality of care in RI, will drive down costs by eliminating duplicative tests, and will provide potentially life-saving medical information in emergencies. The business case for currentcare ??? assembled with the help of The Boston Consulting Group ??? concludes that $5MM of ongoing cost can produce $108MM of healthcare cost savings for RI annually.
The ongoing partnership between HEALTH and RIQI for furthering e-prescribing also will be supported by this cooperative agreement. Launched in 2003, the initiative has helped 100% of RI pharmacies to become enabled for e-prescribing; 31% of all prescriptions in the state are currently being handled electronically by 63% of RI doctors. The HIE program will focus on encouraging a larger percentage of doctors to use e-prescribing and increasing the overall percentage of prescriptions processed electronically.
Also as part of RI???s Strategic and Operational Plans for HIE that will be formalized under this cooperative agreement, RIQI will implement infrastructure to enable the sharing of Continuity of Care Documents between EHRs within individual medical and behavioral health practices. Data aggregated from RI???s numerous small practices (the predominance) will thereby be available for inclusion in the centralized HIE.
Funds made available through this cooperative agreement will support only a portion of the Strategic and Operational Plans that Rhode Island will formalize. Specifically, the grant funding will: enable the adoption of the ongoing pilot of HIE infrastructure as a long-term solution, increase the number of entities contributing patient data and types of data, expand the provider population accessing the HIE, increase the number of Rhode Islanders enrolled in currentcare, and integrate RI???s HIE with the NHIN.
In executing Rhode Island???s Strategic and Operational Plans, RIQI will continue to lever the governance and collaboration structure painstakingly assembled over the last eight years in pursuit of its mission. RIQI depends upon the expertise and opinions of 200+ volunteers who serve on 15 active working committees, in addition to the cumulative experience of the 24 CEO-level directors on RIQI???s Board. The existing control and oversight infrastructure for managing RIQI???s ongoing operations ??? an integral part of RIQI???s track record for delivery and accountability ??? also will be a critical factor in achieving the goals of RI???s plans for this program.
