The federal agency’s EHR modernization is partly an effort to improve interoperability with the private sector.
The Indian Health Service recently issued a request for information for its upcoming EHR modernization in an effort to improve interoperability.
The HHS-affiliated federal agency clarified that the RFI is not a request for proposal and should not be considered an opportunity for health IT vendors to submit bids. The RFI is instead part of an exploratory market research effort to assess health IT industry innovations and capabilities that could meet the needs of IHS health IT and EHR modernization endeavors.
IHS provides healthcare services to American Indians and Alaska Natives per provisions established by the relationship between the federal government and Indian tribes in 1787. To date, the agency provides a healthcare delivery system for nearly 2.2 million American Indians and Alaska Natives nationwide.
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In support of its mission, IHS currently uses a comprehensive EHR system capable of fulfilling a wide variety of clinical and administrative operations. Its current system – the Resource and Patient Management System (RPMS) – includes practice management, scheduling, billing, e-prescribing, inpatient, ambulatory, community care, and data reporting solutions. RPMS has also received 2014 edition ONC health IT certification.
While the EHR system has sufficiently met the needs of its users in past years, IHS stated the need for improved interoperability has contributed to its decision to invest in modernization efforts. In particular, IHS seeks to enable interoperability between its EHR and commercial systems such as Cerner, Epic, and eClinicalWorks systems.
Presently, the decentralized nature of the IHS EHR inhibits efforts to streamline health data exchange between RPMS and other systems.
“The challenge of both intra and interoperability becomes enhanced given diversity and individuality of the instances, as well as rising operations and maintenance costs that result from ‘one-off’ instantiations and lack of standardized configuration management,” IHS said in its RFI.
“Over time, the architecture and complexity of IHS health IT systems, as well as their criticality to health care operations, have become one of the many catalysts for IHS to re-evaluate its current approach to software development and deliverance of health IT services to AI/AN stakeholders,” IHS continued.
As a result of these interoperability problems, IHS plans to modernize or replace RPMS legacy systems including infrastructure supporting its clinical, administrative, and financial operations.
“This project will address the current state of IHS health IT, where multiple legacy systems and disparate data stores, developed over four or more decades, are in need of modernization to ensure and enable sustainability, flexibility, intra/interoperability, patient data federation, population health, and clinical quality measures, toward improved continuity of care,” wrote the federal agency.
IHS will research clinical and technical approaches for delivering end-to-end solutions able to meet the needs of its healthcare facilities. While other federal agencies, including VA, abandoned homegrown legacy systems in favor of a single commercial EHR, IHS stated it is unable to adopt a one-size-fits-all commercial system because of the diversity of its facilities.
However, IHS is interested in potentially adopting a combination of commercial EHR systems capable of meeting its needs.
IHS is looking for feedback about several topics, including clinical decision support and quality measures, practice management, integration, implementation, and other areas of interest.
“Vendors that submit a sufficient and applicative response to this HIT Modernization RFI may receive an invitation to an upcoming IHS industry day to demonstrate capabilities and/or services described in their respective responses,” stated IHS.
Date: Dec 26, 2017