SAVANNAH, GA – The Chatham County Safety Net Planning Council (CCSNPC) in Georgia is on the fast track with its Chatham County Health Information Exchange (HIE).

CCSNPC chose its health IT vendor, Orion Health, in October and anticipates the pilot project going live in March 2010.

CCSNPC was founded in 2004 by the Chatham County Commission and includes providers, government, advocates, employer representation and consumers to help address the uninsured and underinsured problems in the county, said Patricia Lavely, chairwoman of CCSNPC’s IT Consortia and senior vice president and CIO of Memorial University Medical Center, one of two hospital systems in Savannah, Ga.

Of the more than 251,000 residents in Chatham County (2008 data), between 44,000 and 60,000 are uninsured – 24 percent of the population at the high end, she said. The state’s uninsured rate is between 17 percent and 18 percent of the population, above the national average, she pointed out.

Access and capacity are problems for the uninsured people, who typically go to the emergency departments for healthcare, Lavely said. The pilot HIE, which will connect Memorial University Medical Center’s emergency department and one Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) in the county, is expected to decrease costs of duplicative and unnecessary tests, as well as help provide appropriate care in the right setting.