Advancing Electronic Health Information Exchange in Maryland

The Maryland Health Care Commission (MHCC) and the Health Services Cost Review Commission (HSCRC) are working toward the development of a long-term, sustainable plan for supporting the effective, efficient, and secure exchange of health information across the spectrum of health care stakeholders. The Commissions are supporting the work of the Task Force to Study Electronic Health Records, established by legislation enacted by the Maryland General Assembly during its 2005 session. Over the next two years, the Task Force will study the current use, and potential expansion, of electronic health records across the state. Its 26 members include representatives of the Maryland Senate and the House of Delegates, the Office of the Attorney General, the Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland Schools of Medicine, and the federal Veterans Administration, as well as twenty members appointed by the Governor to represent a broad range of provider and consumer interests, as specified in the enabling legislation.

Its legislative mandate calls for the Task Force to identify the key policy, privacy, and economic issues that must be addressed in the creation of a regional health information organization, or RHIO, for Maryland, and to report its findings to the Governor and the General Assembly. The Task Force will evaluate potential obstacles to the establishment of a Maryland RHIO, and recommend broad policies that will govern electronic exchange of health information – policies about the ownership of this vital and personal information, as well as its privacy, security, identity, authentication, and use.

Throughout the state and much of the nation, health information is locked up in disparate computer systems or in paper files. Quality and continuity of patient care requires access to this critical information, wherever and whenever it is needed. MHCC and HSCRC are committed to working with stakeholders to improve the quality and efficiency of health care, through the use of information technology to develop data systems that will enable the secure exchange of health information in Maryland. Current and future patients, the providers of health care and the hospitals and other settings in which they work, public and private payers, public health agencies, and employers and other purchasers of care – all of these have a have a crucial stake in the outcome of this effort.