Joe Heyman, founder of Whittier Independent Practice Association, former board chairman of AMA and president of the Massachusetts Medical Society, is working on a health information exchange structure that would combine multiple streams of data, from contrasting sources, in order to make coherent patient records.

A person of Heyman’s stature has seen enough exchange of health data to know that financial stability is crucial for the survival of HIE. Recently, he was interviewed by Medical Practice Insider and he talked at length about various issues related to HIEs. Let’s discuss some of those.

When asked about when did he start exchanging health data, Heyman noted that he had started using electronic medical records as early as 2001 in his solo practice, as he could not afford to have more employees. In 2005, he was part of one of the three communities to have received a $15 million grant but could not form a HIE. Since then, they have been trying hard to formulate one, but haven’t been successful.

He further said that they had patient access problems and as a result, they were not able to participate in HIEs. He says they will now make sure that all systems are up and running before they go public.

Amongst the biggest reasons for the failure of HIEs is the price. He gave examples of how hospitals and large practices were unable to get the desired results, despite the fact that they had solid income sources. Heyman thinks that the health information exchange should cut across all of the contracting networks. In his opinion, a community-wide HIE has to be financially stable without having to rely on grants.

About the current electronic health information technologies, Heyman says that they are using longitudinal system of maintaining patient records. That means that all the patient’s allergies, vitals, problems, drugs will feature on Y-axis on the left hand side while every patient encounter will be featured in the shape of a dot on the X-axis, going horizontally from left to right. A provider will simply click on that dot to bring up the related information. Talking further about technology, Heyman says that electronic health records are making lives a lot easier for providers. They can see patient prescriptions, medication details, when the medication will run out, lab work and patient charts anytime. HIEs will also make it possible to have all of that data available to all the physicians that a patient might see.

Talking about the availability of these systems for patients, Heyman said that they will publicize it whenever they want to go public with it. He says they have already written documents to enlighten the public.

These were a few details from Heyman’s interview with Medical Practice Insider, which highlight that despite the problems Health Information Exchanges are facing at the moment, a lot is already being done to address the concerns of the providers, public and healthcare centers. It would be safe to assume that we will be able to see HIEs becoming a reality soon.