Budget contains $1M for health information exchange

By Richard Asinof
Contributing Writer
Twitter: @RichardAsinof

PROVIDENCE – The state budget passed by the General Assembly contains more than $1 million in funds for currentcare, Rhode Island’s statewide health information exchange being developed under the direction of the Rhode Island Quality Institute.

The project seeks to create an electronic data mart for electronic medical records, enabling doctors to share, with a patient’s permission, medical records and test results.

To date, about 200,000 Rhode Islanders have opted into the currentcare system, and the projected number of participants by 2013 is about 300,000.

However, federal funding for the project, which has received some $30 million to date, was slated to end in 2013.

The slightly more than $1 million in funds will be drawn from two sources – $450,000 in general revenue based on a per-member, per-month charge for state employees enrolled in the state health plan, and $600,000 in per-member, per-month assessment for Medicaid participants.

The wording of the budget items regarding the use of funds says that the money is to be used for development and operation of the health information exchange.