LANSING - The Michigan Departments of Community Health (MDCH) and Information Technology (MDIT) announced $1.2 million in planning grants to promote an electronic statewide infrastructure that will streamline the secure and confidential exchange of clinical information throughout Michigan.

"These grants will help Michigan move toward becoming the nation's leader in the health IT field," said MDCH Director Janet Olszewski. "The goal is to provide patient data to physicians in faster, safer and more efficient manner to improve the quality of care."

Utilizing the power of Health Information Exchange (HIE) to lower costs and improve health care quality is one of Governor Granholm's top health care reform initiatives. Michigan's HIE strategy is designed to ensure that all of the information a provider needs about a patient is available at the point of care. The purpose of HIE is to give Michigan providers the right information at the right time to make the most informed decision possible. As providers receive increasing access to timely and accurate patient data through HIE, Michigan citizens will benefit from improvements in efficiency, safety and quality of health care.

"Sharing health information so that the quality of healthcare continues to improve is what this is all about," said Ken Theis, director of the Michigan Department of Information Technology and CIO for the State of Michigan. "The citizens of Michigan deserve to be relieved of the burden of completing the same health information every time they make contact with the healthcare industry, and these grants get us a step closer to that goal."

Funding for the program was introduced by Governor Jennifer M. Granholm in her FY08 Executive Budget and was appropriated by the Legislature for FY08. Regional partners awarded grant funding include:

- ChangeScape, Inc. for $580,000 (Berrien, Branch, Calhoun, Cass, Kalamazoo, St. Joseph and Van Buren counties)

- Altarum Institute for $674,474 (Hillsdale, Jackson, Lenawee, Livingston and Washtenaw counties)

The focus of these grants is to develop the technical specifications, business plan and community support to implement HIE efforts throughout a specific multi-county region. The grants have a start date of September 1, 2008.

Statewide HIE development is being led by the public-private partnership known as the Michigan Health Information Network (MiHIN). This is the second year for MiHIN HIE planning and implementation grants. In 2007, eight grants were distributed with work currently underway in over 70 counties in Michigan. With these two new awards, all the counties in the state are part of either planning or implementation efforts for regional health information exchange.

MiHIN grew out of a statewide, multi-stakeholder planning process in 2006 that resulted in a report titled Conduit to Care. These current grants advance the report's recommendations to increase connectivity and make patient information available at the point of care. The state has also funded a MiHIN Resource Center to coordinate and support the regional initiatives as well as develop solutions to critical statewide HIE issues including privacy, security and confidentiality.

The report and more information can be found at www.michigan.gov/mihin. For more information on the MiHIN Resource Center and the regional HIE efforts, please visit www.mihin.org.