Regional Health Information Organization

Regional Health Information Organizations (RHIOs) are key to the US National Health Information Network (NHIN). The Office for the National Coordinator has contracted with the National Alliance for Health Information Technology to lead workgroups of national experts in defining key terms including RHIO and to solicit public comments. The effort began in late 2007 and is scheduled to be completed by mid-2008. The status of this definition process can be tracked at the website: http://definitions.nahit.org/. RHIOs are multistakeholder organizations expected to be responsible for motivating and causing integration and information exchange in the nation’s revamped healthcare system. Generally these stakeholders are developing a RHIO to affect the safety, quality, and efficiency of healthcare as well as access to healthcare as the result of health information technology. Regions in the US continue to use various definitions of "multistakeholder organizations." For instance, in Wichita, Kansas the Clinics Patient Index is a software architecture as well as support environment that facilitates integration among outpatient clinics and hospital emergency departments. Other RHIOs are forming with multiple hospitals, while still others might include medical societies, payers and major employers.

RHIOs are a specialization of Health information exchanges (HIE). Health information exchange (HIE) is defined as the mobilization of healthcare information electronically across organizations within a region or community. HIE provides the capability to electronically move clinical information between disparate healthcare information systems while maintaining the meaning of the information being exchanged. The goal of HIE is to facilitate access to and retrieval of clinical data to provide safer, more timely, efficient, effective, equitable, patient-centered care. HIEs also provide the infrastructure for secondary use of clinical data for purposes such as public health, clinical, biomedical, and consumer health informatics research as well as institution and provider quality assessment and improvement.