Webinar (Slides) with State HIE Participants May 20, 2010:
Evaluation of State Health Information Exchange Cooperative Agreements Program
NORC (National Opinion Research Center) at the University of Chicago made a presentation to State HIE Leaders on May 20, 2010 on the evaluation project that Office of National Coordinator (ONC) for Health IT has hired them to perform. NORC will seek best practices and evaluate progress of state programs against those best practices and goals of the State HIE Cooperative Agreement Program.
Excerpted from State HIE Leadership Forum
Slide set PDF
Webinar with State HIE Participants
May 20, 2010
Agenda
• Introduce the evaluation team
• Provide an overview of the evaluation approach
• Discuss the evaluation technical assistance that the evaluation team will provide
• Provide an overview of the work that is being done to identify measure to track progress towards state goals
NORC Key Staff
• Prashila Dullabh (Project Director)
• Alana Knudson (Co-Project Director)
Other listed as well as sub-contractors
Overview of the Evaluation
• ONC awarded NORC contract in March 2010 to:
Evaluation of the State Health Information Exchange (HIE)
Cooperative Agreement Program focusing on systematic and timely feedback
Identify best practices that successful states are taking to enable or facilitate exchange
Analyze issues and challenges
Assess the effectiveness of the Program in furthering information exchange capability within states
• Convene a Technical Advisory Group (TAG)
• Provide evaluation-related Technical Assistance (TA)
Research Domains
The evaluation team will explore the following key research questions:
1. What are the various approaches that states are taking to enable or facilitate health information exchange?
2. What progress have states made in supporting health information exchange?
3. How does the approach relate to the level of implementation progress?
Evaluation Activities
• Review of state plans
• Conduct initial case studies
• Conduct structured interviews
• Review and analysis of data from states
• Collect additional data
Case Studies
• Objective: Identify lessons learned and strategies for overcoming barriers to HIE
• After reviewing the state plans, the evaluation team will propose a selection of possible candidates for the TAG’s review and approval.
• Selection criteria include:
Stage of development
Best practices for rapid implementation
Overall model, scope and level of stakeholder participation
Innovative or different technical approach
Services provided
Geographic diversity/Approaches to interstate exchange
• A case study report of key findings will be produced and shared with the program managers
Case Studies Approach
• Case studies to involve:
Site visits
Analysis of background materials and developing profiles of selected states
One-on-one discussions with HIE leadership and stakeholders
Focus group discussions with users and non-users
Evaluation Technical Assistance
• The evaluation team will provide technical assistance to the
states in their evaluation efforts by:
Conducting webinars and teleconferences related to specific components of evaluation
Holding evaluation seminars/workshops for state evaluation personnel to share ideas and listen to best practices
Collating available tools and resources on evaluation
• What other approaches to technical assistance would be helpful?
Background on Performance Measures
• Reporting on performance measures is a program requirement and stipulated as part of the funding received by all states
• Purpose is to provide assessments on the overall progress and success of the Cooperative Agreement Program
• Focus is to develop measures that allow ONC to gain a deeper understanding of the current level of exchange within each state program and monitor changes over time
• Evaluation team to collaborate with ONC to develop baseline performance measures that relate to the development of HIE and compliments the overall evaluation
Selection and Design
Factors considered:
• Relevance of the measure across or within each of the phases of HIE maturity
• Relevance of the measures to the proposed meaningful use criteria
• Availability of data sources which could populate each measure
• Feasibility of states to get access to data sources
Approach
• Assist ONC in the development of a draft set of process-based and outcome-based measures
• Refine the draft set of measures with input from states and ONC
What are optimum approaches to involve the states in the development of the measures?
