CurrentSCHIEx Overview
The health care market in South Carolina is much like it is elsewhere within the United States. Health care is delivered by numerous physicians, hospitals, public health facilities, pharmacies, laboratories, and imaging centers. South Carolina residents receive their care from a personally chosen set of the caregivers. Some are cared for exclusively by one caregiver, but most utilize a panel of caregivers and move from one to another over time. As is the case elsewhere in the United States, the clinical information about South Carolina residents rarely moves with them, between caregivers or across time, resulting in a lack of continuity of care and increased expenditures. Fortunately, expansion of Health Information Technology (HIT) is creating exciting changes in the health care market.
South Carolina is at the forefront of HIT with both public and private initiatives underway to enhance the quality, safety and efficiency of health care for South Carolina residents. Health care providers are changing from paper to an Electronic Health Record (EHR). This will enable them to participate in secure Health Information Exchange (HIE), making it possible for important health information to be available when and where it is needed to support the best possible patient outcomes. Equally important, health care has been able to capitalize on all of the advances in information privacy and security made by other industries, who embraced information technology much earlier.
SCHIEx (pronounced SKY-eks), the South Carolina Health Information Exchange, is South Carolina's existing statewide HIE. It provides an innovative state-level information highway that enables participating health care providers to view a patient's integrated medical history, including medications, diagnoses, and procedures involving other participating providers. SCHIEx is not a statewide clinical data warehouse. Instead, it is a secure network that participating providers with certified EHR technology can use to locate and share needed patient information with each other.
SCHIEx helps providers make more informed clinical decisions at the point of care, and reduce duplication and potential errors by providing them with information on services previously rendered. SCHIEx helps consumers receive more coordinated health care, saving time and expenses associated with duplicate or unnecessary tests and medical visits, paperwork or treatment delays. Although SCHIEx can be an important tool in improving the quality of health care, a consumer can choose to "opt out" of having his or her health information exchanged through SCHIEx. Health care providers are required to notify patients that they participate in SCHIEx and provide them with information about opting out.
SCHIEx demonstrates compliance with national interoperability standards and will ultimately facilitate connecting to the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN) as well as other states. SCHIEx is a public technology utility supported by the South Carolina Budget and Control Board's Office of Research and Statistics (ORS) and is governed by the Interim Governance Committee (IGC) that was established in 2009 by executive order. The IGC is a joint public and private entity comprised of representatives from health care provider organizations, non-profit research institutions, state agencies as well as a consumer representative.
Interested in learning more? Feel free to contact us.
