Connections is a program of the Public Health Informatics Institute and is supported by the Genetic Services Branch of the Health Resources and Services Administration's Maternal and Child Health Bureau (HRSA/MCHB).

News In Brief

Connections member state agencies awarded AHRQ contracts
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has awarded contracts to help public health agencies develop their statewide health information technology systems.

Participating state health departments in Indiana, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Utah are Connections members.

Institute to present at PHIN conference
Two abstracts from the Public Health Informatics Institute have been accepted for oral presentation at the Third Annual Public Health Information Network (PHIN) Conference in Atlanta May 10 - 12, 2005. PHIN is sponsored by the CDC.

Institute topics include Connections Community of Practice: Collaborative Approach to Knowledge Generation and Management and Principles, Core Functions, and Performance Measures for Integrated Child Health Information Systems: Collaborative Development.

Rhode Island RHIO gains traction
Rhode Island's Department of Health (DoH) is working to improve health care quality, safety, and value through undertaking a statewide data sharing and interoperability demonstration project. The effort is funded by an AHRQ grant. The goal of the demonstration project is to create and implement a Master Patient Index to initially share (with patient consent), data from child health information systems, laboratories, electronic prescribing systems, hospital electronic health records, and health center encounter data with authorized health care providers. The project's vision is: The system must be useful, usable, and used.

Rhode Island already has a not-for-profit organization, the Rhode Island Quality Institute (RIQI), whose main focus is to improve the quality, safety, and value of health care in the state. RIQI represents a collaboration of health insurers, hospital systems, hospitals, provider group practices, health professional organizations, the Medicare Quality Improvement Organization, academia (medical school, public health program, school of pharmacy), business, consumers, and government.

Given that RIQI was a relatively young organization (two years old at the time), and has minimal infrastructure and staffing, RIQI approached the Department of Health to serve as the applicant for the AHRQ contract. Although the Rhode Island DoH submitted and was awarded the contract, it seemed prudent to leverage the existence of RIQI, help to build its infrastructure, and position it as an organization that could evolve into the state's RHIO. With this in mind, it was decided that RIQI should actually provide the governance for the statewide data sharing and interoperability demonstration project.

For more information about RIQI, contact Laura Adams at ladams@riqi.org,

For more information about the demonstration project, contact Amy Zimmerman at amyz@doh.state.ri.us.

Feature Article

Understanding FERPA
A quick overview of a 30-year-old federal law
The Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) of 1974 is a federal law that gives parents of students under 18, and students 18 and over, the right to examine school records -- including health information -- kept in the student's personal file.

As public health agencies increasingly look toward integrating their information systems with other programs and organizations both internal and external, FERPA often surfaces as a confusing legal obstacle without clear federal guidance.

In February, the monthly Connections conference call centered around FERPA issues associated with health records. Guest speakers Beverly Dozier and Gail Horlick of the the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provided "a quick overview of FERPA" and answered questions from call participants.
Read more >

On Site With

Sherry Spence
Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Data Systems Coordinator, Oregon Department of Human Services, Health Services,
Office of Family Health, MCH Systems

We launched FamilyNet in 2003 to integrate MCH data systems, beginning with the Public Health Immunizations program and the Special Supplemental Nutrition program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). FamilyNet is a fully integrated system in which each program's data is secured against unauthorized use. Although the system is fully operational and password-protected, you can explore a prototype of the Family & Child Module in development. (See the link below.) This will give you a feel for the online experience in the active system.

FamilyNet is now creating a two-way link between Public Health Immunizations and Oregon's population-based Immunization ALERT Registry. Perinatal and Child Health community-based programs will soon be added as the Family & Child Module of FamilyNet, integrating those programs with each other, with population-based newborn screening and follow-up programs, and with the WIC and Immunization programs. This will provide a key public health contribution to the envisioned Electronic Medical Record.

FamilyNet integrates these programs through two strategies:
1) The FamilyNet Client Master, which provides a single, shared database of participants.
2) Information collection at the point of service, which ensures high quality in state level reporting because the reporting system is used by those providing the local services.

For more information
FamilyNet: https://dhs-web3.hr.state.or.us/fnfcmdev/login.jsp Note: This is a prototype, so it has limited functionality.
Click on Submit or blue text to move around. The browser Back and Forward arrows may be used if not shaded out.

Office of Family Health: http://www.oregon.gov/DHS/ph/ofhs/

Meeting Highlights

Connections meeting, Bethesda, Maryland
March 14-16, 2005
The first face-to-face meeting of Connections, a community of practice, allowed state and local health department members, Institute staff, and HRSA/MCHB supporters to get to know each other, further their collaboration on information systems integration issues, share best practices/lessons learned to address the issues, and design the format of Connections for the next year.

Dave Ross, director of the Public Health Informatics Institute, introduced keynote speaker Dale Nordenberg, who serves as Associate Director and Chief Information Officer at the National Center for Infectious Diseases at CDC, and works with David Brailer in the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology in the Department of Health and Human Services. In this role, Nordenberg coordinates the public and private sector interoperable health information system initiatives working to improve child health. For more information, visit www.hhs.gov/healthit/.

Connections members discussed their possible role in the national effort to develop interoperable systems to serve child health. As representatives of public health departments, they offer a significant range of experiences, relationships, and existing information systems that can advance the goals of interoperability.

Participants also conducted breakout sessions focused on:
1) Integrating programs in addition to information systems.
2) Regional health information organizations (RHIOs).
3) Evaluation of integrated child health information systems.
4) Developing a business case.

Building on the excitement generated from the keynote discussion, Connections members identified several areas of promise for ongoing collaboration, including developing resources and tools, actively sharing lessons learned, encouraging more peer-to-peer meetings, and informing the national level about state and local health department activities.

Before the meeting adjourned, participants created a matrix of next steps and action items for the Connections community of practice to tackle over the next year. These ideas will be honed, and the ones perceived as potentially producing the most value to the larger public health community will be further developed. Through this newsletter, the Connections community will keep you up-to-date on developments.

For more information on Connections, contact Lorrie Alvin ( lalvin@phii.org) at the Public Health Informatics Institute.

Connections Unique Records work group meeting, Atlanta, March 28-30, 2005
The Connections work group on Unique Records convened in Atlanta recently to focus on creating useful and usable products to help public health agencies improve their data matching and merging.

The challenge: Every public health agency that seeks to integrate child-specific data from disparate sources confronts difficulties associated with correctly identifying individuals and ensuring that only one health record exists for each person in a system. These matching and merging issues create huge data management challenges and can impose barriers to providing health care for children, especially those with special health needs.

In this productive two-day meeting, the work group planned a portfolio of helpful guides and tools they will develop over the coming months. Connections will make these materials available to public health practitioners later in 2005.

About Connections
Connections -- a community of practice launched in Fall 2004 – assists state and local public health agencies to improve the health of children through the provision of accurate, timely, and comprehensive information and to strengthen the medical home.

Connections
Public Health Informatics Institute
750 Commerce Drive, Suite 400, Decatur, GA 30030
TEL: 1.866.815.9704 FAX: 1.800.765.7520
http://www.phii.org/
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