July-August 2011

During June 2011 three new Board members were appointed to the KHIN Board of Directors. This brings the total number of KHIN Board members to seven. The new Board member profiles are listed below. 

Bob Finuf has been the CEO of Children's Mercy Family Health Partners (CMFHP) based in Kansas City since 2002. CMFHP is a not-for-profit safety net health plan owned by Children's Mercy Hospitals and Clinics, a not-for-profit free-standing pediatric health system. CMFHP operates a Safety Net Health Plan that contracts with the states of Kansas and Missouri to provide health insurance benefits to children and adults that are eligible for Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Plan (CHIP). Mr. Finuf has over 25 years of experience as a manager and executive in managed care organizations.

 

 

Mark Miller currently serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Memorial Health System. He began his career at Memorial in October 2001 after serving for 20 years with the US Army Medical Service Corps. Memorial Health System is chartered as a hospital district and is comprised of a 25 bed Critical Access Hospital, 10 bed Geri-Psych Unit, 75 bed free-standing nursing home, 60 apartment independent living center, free-standing community fitness center, home health service, child development center, hospice service, and rural health clinic.

 

 

Krista Postai is President and Chief Executive Officer of the Community Health Center of Southeast Kansas (CHC/SEK). She joined CHC/SEK in 2004 and has overseen its growth into one of the state's largest federally qualified health centers providing medical, dental and mental health services to 23,000 patients at five full-time sites through 70,000 visits annually. She is past Board President of the Kansas Association for the Medically Underserved, Kansas' primary care association. Prior to joining CHC/SEK, she served as Vice President of Planning and Development at Mt. Carmel Regional Medical Center (now Via Christi Hospital/Pittsburg) for 23 years.

 

The KHIN Board and staff are pleased to welcome the new members. Additional Board members will be added throughout 2011 and 2012.

Our staff is pleased to announce the availability of an easy-to-use Community Toolkit to assist health care stakeholders in the establishment of health information exchange at the community level. The KHIN HIE Community Toolkit is designed to provide an outline of the key decision points that a community will need to make as it begins to participate in health information exchange.

"Community" can have different configurations. For example some communities are oriented around the local hospital and the physicians and other providers that share information with the hospital. Some larger communities such as Wichita and Kansas City have many hospitals and providers. In reviewing a map of current KHIN Participants, you can see there are several different types of health care providers in several different communities already participating. 

The toolkit covers the following:

• Importance of community governance in HIE efforts
• Things to consider in setting up the governance structure
• Mapping tool to identify health care stakeholders in the community
• Technology readiness to participate in health information exchange efforts
• Identification of early adopters
• Identification of use cases for how the HIE will be utilized in the community
• On-boarding process for the next group of organizations that join KHIN

The HIE community tool kit will always be a work-in-progress as we learn the best manner in which to support communities in developing health information exchange. If you would like the KHIN team to visit your community or health system please contact Tiffanie Hickman at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to schedule a visit.

July 2011 marked a very important milestone for KHIN. The University of Kansas Hospital formally joined KHIN and Via Christi Health is in the final stages of joining. These two hospitals, University of Kansas Hospital located in Kansas City, KS and Via Christi located in Wichita KS experience significant referrals from other Kansas hospitals and physicians. Thus, the ability to share important patient health care data with them and receive information from them is critical to health information exchange efforts in Kansas. Together they will help to form the essential backbone of the KHIN data exchange.

Via Christi Health

Via Christi Health is the largest provider of health care services in Kansas. Based in Wichita, it serves Kansas and northeast Oklahoma through its doctors, hospitals, senior villages and health services. Via Christi Health Services includes:

• 11 fully or partially owned hospitals—Wichita, Pittsburg, Manhattan, Salina, Wamego
• Ambulatory surgery and imaging centers—Wichita with 10,000 employees
• 1100 physicians have privileges at Via Christi Hospitals
• Wichita Clinic includes 210 physicians
• Via Christi Medical Associates includes 65 physicians
• Via Christi Community Services includes 140 physicians

University of Kansas Hospital

The University of Kansas Hospital is the largest single hospital in the Kansas City area in inpatient volume. In 2010 it discharged 26,180 patients; outpatient visits were 361,152 and it had 46,209 emergency room visits. For the past four years, The University of Kansas Hospital has ranked on U.S. News & World Report's Best Hospitals lists. Out of almost 5,000 hospitals evaluated for 2010-11,only 152 made the list in at least one specialty.

In 2010 the University of Kansas Hospital provided care to patients from every Kansas county (105 counties). In total over 113,000 Kansans. University of Kansas Hospital employs over 500 physicians and has over 340 residents. The University of Kansas Physicians is the largest physician practice in Kansas.

Kansas Health Information Network and eHealthAlign, the health information exchange in Kansas City, have been working together for the last six months to bring their two Informatics Corporation of America (ICA) technology contracts together. In June 2011 KHIN and eHealthAlign announced that they had successfully merged the two contracts into one. KHIN will manage the contract and work directly with the technology vendor. The merger will allow one standardized approach across Kansas and western Missouri for management of the health information exchange technology infrastructure. The merging of the two contracts will ensure that all efficiencies in scale related to the help desk, project management, training team, education and outreach, analytics, and interface costs to state level services are not duplicated. This will result in cost savings for providers.

During July a group of 34 physicians and other eligible providers worked with the KHIN and ICA project management teams to pilot the secure clinical messaging process that allows eligible providers to exchange clinical information with other health care providers. This will meet the meaningful use core measure of exchanging health care data with an unaffiliated provider. The group attended online training and gained access to the KHIN secure clinical messaging site to create a message. All participants in the pilot group will utilize their EHR to create a Continuity of Care Document (CCD) and then attach it to a KHIN secure message. The physician sends the message with patient health information securely to another provider.

The pilot group has completed their training and will provide feedback to KHIN and ICA project management teams for improvement. In September -December 2011 all other providers will receive instructions and the necessary protocols to securely message another provider and qualify for incentive payments. To date approximately 400 Kansas physicians and eligible providers are expected to securely exchange information in 2011 using the KHIN platform. If you or your practice would like to participate in secure clinical messaging please go to www.KHINonline.org and sign up.