One local company has begun to lay the groundwork for that next step — but on a scale some experts say the industry may not be ready for just yet.
Surescripts, an Arlington firm that operates a data network for physicians to send prescriptions and medical records electronically, last week announced the largest-ever expansion of its network, adding 19 new state and regional health-information groups from across the country as part of a broader effort by the company to build a nationwide data hub for health-care professionals.
Many of those new clients are consortiums of hospitals and insurers, known as health-
information exchanges, that sprouted up in the last few years to improve the way the players in their local health systems share information. Most were born out of a law signed in 2009, which authorized the federal government to spend about $25 billion on grants and other incentives to encourage health-care groups to start digitizing patient records and, later, to start sharing them electronically.
“There was all this government money that went out to put fancy electronic records in doctors’ offices and wires in the ground, but we’re at the point where that stimulus funding is running out, and you have this space to do the last mile of connectivity, to plug it all into the wall and start sharing those records,” John Kelly, one of the original architects of the health-information exchange in Massachusetts, said in an interview.
Some health-information exchanges have started tackling that step among their own hospitals and physicians, said Kelly, now a principal business adviser at Edifecs, a health-care technology firm based in Bellevue, Wash. However, the more difficult challenge, and the one Surescripts is trying to address, is sending those files from one region’s health system to that of another.
“All of this information is now automated and computerized, but the problem we see is that physicians and hospital systems in different areas can’t communicate with each other,” Surescripts chief executive Harry Totonis said in an interview.
Retooling the network
Originally focused on helping doctors send prescriptions electronically, Surescripts started retooling its existing network a few years ago, anticipating demand for a national record-sharing service for health information.
It would function much like a wireless Internet service but be specifically tailored for doctors, pharmacists and other health professionals, he said.
“Instead of each regional network trying to build connections to every other one, we are enabling them to just build one connection to us, and we process and deliver the information where it needs to go,” Totonis said.
