WASHINGTON – Hospitals and other health organizations that are part of a health information exchange are well positioned to qualify for federal stimulus money under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The health IT policy committee of the Office of the National Coordinator of Health IT revised the criteria for "meaningful use" to qualify for incentive payments under the federal stimulus package on July 16.

One of the revisions is to develop the capability to exchange health information where possible. That criterion will help healthcare organizations participating in health information exchanges (HIEs) and regional health information organizations (RHIOs) be prime candidates for reimbursement bonuses and will also encourage others to follow suit, insiders say.

It also bodes well for health IT companies that provide products and services for HIEs and RHIOs, such as MedPlus. MedPlus, a wholly owned subsidiary of Quest Diagnostics, has participated in three of the nine NHIN Trial Implementations' use cases, involving the New Mexico Health Information Collaborative, Long Beach Network for Health and the New York Clinical Information Exchange (NYCLIX) of Manhattan.

The requirement that hospitals and physicians be able to exchange key clinical information electronically addresses the need to eliminate gaps in care between inpatient and outpatient settings and delivering actionable information to both settings based on the flow of data. MedPlus is leveraging the work it's done with the three NHIN use cases to that very end.

"We're looking at how we can take advantage of some of our successes in terms of aggregating clinical patient information and trying to provide that in an actionable format at the ambulatory level," said Rohit Nayak, vice president of sales for Care360 Clinical information Solutions at MedPlus. "Adoption is a key issue, not just about the technology but how you use the technology."

More than 140,000 physicians use MedPlus' physician technology, he said. "Between our efforts at the HIE level and ambulatory successes and technology components, we have a fairly good perspective and opportunity in terms of providing the kind of technology that physicians want to use for the information at hand," said Nayak.

The ability to share inpatient and outpatient data requires integration, he said. "It's clear that in order to get all of these pieces of information together in a cohesive manner you have to take a systems integrator approach," Nayak said. "When standards become real and evolved, they will drive down some of those needs."

MedPlus has seen an increasing number of vendors approaching the company for integration purposes, particularly for accessing community information databases, he said. "Vendors recognize that this is a component of the proposed solution," he said.

Now that the revised criteria have been released, "it's all coming together," Nayak said. "We've figured out how to collect, aggregate and present information. What's happening with the stimulus is going to actuate whatever ideas HIE has in terms of driving adoption and using that information in an actionable setting."