Chuck Christian, VP of Technology & Engagement, IHIE, Chapter 1

In today’s healthcare IT world, there’s a whole lot of talk about interoperability — and unfortunately, there’s also a whole lot of misunderstanding, says Chuck Christian, VP of Technology and Engagement with the Indiana Health Information Exchange. He believes that if the industry wants to make real strides in achieving this Holy Grail, it’s time to start clearing the air.

Recently we spoke with Christian, who has more than 20 years of CIO experience under his belt, about the difference between what’s being reported about interoperability and what’s really happening in the trenches. We also discuss the most common requests IHIE receives from providers (and how they’re working to fulfill them); how his organization is leverage the knowledge of students to de-identify data; the discussions he believes CIOs need to have with vendors; and why, all things considered, he’s still optimistic about the future of healthcare IT.

Chapter 1



* IHIE’s key priorities in 2018

* Physicians’ most common requests

* Leveraging HIEs to avoid duplicate testing

* Clinical repositories: “It’s a way to electronically tap physicians on the shoulder.”

* FHIR’s potential

* Meeting members’ needs: “They’re all trying to solve similar issues.”

* Challenges with social determinants — “There’s no standard code set”



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Bold Statements

When that lab that comes from a reference laboratory comes to us, we can take a look at the result to make sure that it has the appropriate LOINC coding and then move the medical record number into the transaction, so that when we send it in to their EMR, the EMR knows what to do with it.

It’s a way to electronically tap the physician on the shoulder and say, ‘excuse me, but this patient has had this very study two weeks ago, or three weeks ago, or within a defined time frame. Would you like to look at it?’ It can avoid the cost of the study, but also avoid irradiating the patient unnecessarily.

It is a partnership that we have to work at in order to make sure that the requirements they’re asking for are something we have the capacity to do, since we write our own code and do our own development.

They all are trying to solve very similar issues around the impacts of regulatory change, value-based purchasing, and the new reimbursement methodologies that the payers and the federal government are coming out with. And more and more of those are requiring more data about the patient populations than what that healthcare organization may have within their EMR.

Gamble:  Hi Chuck, thank you for taking time to speak with us. It’s great to be able to get your perspective on what’s going on in the industry.

Christian:  Thanks very much, always glad to offer what little I know.

Gamble:  Let’s start with something that you do know, the Indiana Health Information Exchange. Can you talk about what’s new with the organization, and what are some of the things that are really top of mind right now?

Christian:  We’re looking at what we need to do next to continue to add value to our members. We’ve had a couple of really interesting projects that we’ve done this year. One of the things is, from the very beginning, clinicians said they didn’t have access to data. When the clinical data repository was stood up a long time ago, they had access to it and they were able to get to it, which they were very thankful for.

Then it was, ‘now I have an EMR. This is my workflow, and I don’t want to log into something else.’ So we were able to provide a single sign-on where they were looking at a patient within their EMR and they could click a button and it would open up their view of the longitudinal patient record in a patient context.