One of the more frustrating aspects for some healthcare providers in adopting Health Information Technology (HIT) is that in some cases the adoption of HIT has resulted in more paperwork than in the past. Even providers in the same town using the same vendor end up having to fax Electronic Health Record (EHR) information if their systems are not set up to share information electronically.
Fortunately, there is a solution. Allowing easy sharing of health information between different hospitals, clinics and physicians is the mission of the State Health Alliance for Records Exchange (SHARE), which has been working to coordinate HIT activities throughout Arkansas and in neighboring states.
SHARE allows care teams to coordinate patient care with other providers to share critical information about patients to the entire care coordination team across all stages of care.
“Providers may have the same EHR system, but not the same components or models,” said Shirley Tyson, interim director of SHARE. “SHARE takes that out of the equation. Seventeen hospitals are now live and pushing patient information to SHARE with eight more in the implementation phase. In addition, there are currently 365 practices that have joined SHARE. Some examples of the larger hospitals connected to SHARE include the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Arkansas Children’s Hospital, Conway Regional, Jefferson Regional Medical Center in Pine Bluff, and White River Medical Center, just to name a few.”
SHARE gathers patients’ clinical data from all participating healthcare providers to instantly give doctors a holistic view of their patients’ health history, treatment and progress. Tyson said that is powerful information that can transform the way that a facility plans, delivers, and coordinates health care.
“In a nutshell, SHARE provides access to patient’s info at the point of care in a real time manner,” Tyson said. “Healthcare providers don’t have to chase the data. SHARE is vendor agnostic. It doesn’t matter who the vendor is or whose system is being used. SHARE is designed to connect to those system so information can be accessed.”
In addition, SHARE is also able to help providers meet their Meaningful Use incentive requirements for EHRs. The use of SHARE can help avoid duplicate testing and procedures, and make it easier to make referrals.
“Joining SHARE will allow your facility to be part of the more than 1,210,990 secure patient records accessible to Arkansas’ health care providers through SHARE,” Tyson said. “In addition to improved quality of care and efficient cost savings, SHARE provides a secure and private way to exchange health data. Because state and federal law require that health information be kept secure both while it is being sent through a computer, and while it is at a provider’s office, providers who join SHARE can be assured that all electronic health information exchanged in SHARE is protected and safeguarded by security protocols that provide a higher level of privacy and accountability than paper health records. Paper records do not provide this level of security. With SHARE, only those individuals with a need to know see the patient’s record.”
There can be economic barriers for some hospitals adopting SHARE. Jan Bartlett, SHARE policy director, said that some large hospital systems that have invested considerable resources with a HIS vendor might not yet recognize the value of using SHARE to connect with other healthcare providers in the state.
“They have spent a fortune on their HIS and they want to get as much value as possible from the purchased system," Bartlett said. “Paying an additional fee for SHARE may seem unnecessary. But, unfortunately, patients don’t stay within hospital systems. Hospitals won’t have information about patients who have received care from other providers such as nursing homes, rehab facilities and non-owned clinics. SHARE can provide access to health information outside their HIS.”
Hospitals joining SHARE are able to send and receive health information using Secure Messaging (SM) that allows some patient information to be shared securely and electronically from sender to receiver. While not allowing access to an entire patient’s record across multiple healthcare providers, SM is more secure and faster than using faxes. Baptist Health uses SM to communicate with other healthcare providers using SHARE.
SM uses DirectTrust protocol, which creates a trusted relationship between systems and users. Another example of SM is Simple Share, which allows a hospital to send secure messages to SHARE users.
Another low technical option is SHARE’s Virtual Health Record (VHR) which permits hospitals and clinics view only access to the patient’s health record using a web-based portal.
Tyson said in the long run, there will be efficiency cost savings by eliminating all of the faxing of documents back and forth, and courier services. Personnel costs for facilities that have people dedicated to monitoring a secure fax line will be reduced.
“Manning fax machines, dealing with paper records, the need for that will go away,” Tyson said.
Cost of participating in SHARE depends on what the provider wants, ranging from SM to a fully integrated health information exchange. The cost of joining SHARE depends on the services wanted from SM to the VHR or to a fully integrated health information exchange. Costs are as low as $50 per month.

For more information, call (501) 410-1999 or visit www.SHAREarkansas.com or www.OHIT.arkansas.