RHIOs: What's the Prognosis?

Regional Health Information Organizations:

A recent note in Christina's Considerations points us to a good survey on the potentials and perils of RHIO formation. Just in the past several days, there's been a flurry of reporting on and analysis of RHIOs. So, what is the prognosis?

RHIOs lead to better quality of healthcare service delivery. RHIOs are costly. RHIOs belong to all of us, or at least are funded for the most part by federal grants. RHIOs are struggling to become self-sufficient. RHIOs are anathema to organized, business-oriented delivery of treatment.

So, what is the prognosis?

There's a review of the long, arduous task of RHIO development in "Eight years later, RHIO looks for traction," an article on the status of a benchmark RHIO implementation effort in Santa Barbara. Same day, there's a warning in "Connectivity eases crowding," an article on dealing with regional interoperability of healthcare information systems in San Diego County, that you're better off not calling your integration effort a "RHIO" lest you make participating organizations (i.e. those you want to adopt as clients) a bit skittish about the costs and headaches of all those governance issues that seem to go along with quality of care. Then there's "Perspective: RHIOs beware," the study that Christina mentioned, that flat out pulls us into the "controversy" surrounding the whole process of selecting a RHIO modeling, funding its development, and maintaining client support in a self-sustaining fashion among the P's (payers, providers, and -- oh, yes -- patients).

Here's the synopsis of those commentaries:

Eight years later, RHIO looks for traction
Santa Barbara County provides a case study in the challenges that can result from building health data exchanges.

Connectivity eases crowding
San Diego County pilots public health information-sharing network by starting small and avoiding the RHIO label

Perspective: RHIOs beware
A little controversy is good for the health information exchange (HIE) industry. So says Erica Drazen, vice president and managing director of First Consulting Group's Emerging Practices. This year FCG released its "Myths and Realities of RHIOs" ... and more recently its "Health Delivery Provider Predictions 2006 Executive Insights, " the latter a summary of company executives' top healthcare predictions through 2006.

Why the sudden interest? Whose interest is it? Take a look and let me know:

What is the prognosis?