Electronic patient information transfer funding approved

The Board of Examiners on Tuesday approved $1.2 million to HealtHIE Nevada to expand the electronic data system that will allow secure transmission of patient information among providers.

Valerie Hoffman told the board the funding “is going to go a long way to help provide the mechanism so patients don’t have to go to separate providers, gather paper records and carry them around with them.”

Instead, she said medical providers would have that information electronically delivered to them.

“I’ve lived through this,” she told the board headed by Gov. Brian Sandoval.

She said her oldest son had to have a liver transplant a few years ago and when a liver became available, she had just a day to go to multiple providers to get his medical records and X-rays to get them to Stanford.

She said she did it, he got the transplant and has now been healthy for four years.

“He is thriving, a very successful IT engineer working in Reno,” she said.

The contract is to provide Health Information Exchange information to aggregate patient information into a secure repository. Two-thirds of the cost is covered by the federal government with the state paying the rest.

The board also approved an $8.6 million addition to the Western Identification Network in which criminal repository information is shared among eight western states. Public Safety Director Jim Wright said the added cost is being shared among those states to pay for system hardware and software upgrades to support the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) program. He said the upgrades are converting the system into an Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS).

The board approved a $9.36 million increase to extend the DMV contract with Datamatx. The company provides DMV with mail services. Sean McDonald told the board DMV mails out upward of 640,000 pieces of mail each year from vehicle insurance notices, registration and driver licensing letters and cards. He said the extension adds six years to the contract. McDonald said Datamatx does an excellent job for the state and has been easy to work with. Most of the contract addition, 86 percent of the money, he said is postage fees to mail those cards and letters.