Clinical trial NCT01446705: Evaluation of VLER-Indiana Health Information Exchange Demonstration Project
Official title: Evaluation of VLER_Indiana Health Information Exchange Demonstration Project
Study type: OBSERVATIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Conditions: Diabetes Mellitus
Asthma
Cardiovascular Diseases
Heart Failure
Osteoporosis
Lead sponsor: VA Office of Research and Development
Sponsor class: FED
Collaborators: name: Regenstrief Institute, Inc.
First posted: 2011-10-05
Enrollment: 57073
Sex: ALL
Standard ages: CHILD
ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: no
Observational model: COHORT
Time perspective: RETROSPECTIVE
Sampling method: NON_PROBABILITY_SAMPLE
Study population: Veteran's receiving care at the Indianapolis VAMC

Brief summary: Three out of four Veterans receive a portion of their care from non-VA providers. On April 9, 2009, President Barack Obama directed the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense to create the Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record (VLER). On August 2010, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki visited Indianapolis, and after visiting with leaders from the VA Health Services Research \& Development (HSR\&D) Center of Excellence and the Regenstrief Institute, he made the following public comments regarding the latest partnership between the two institutions: "This new technology allows safer, more secure, and private access to electronic health information which, in turn, enhances our ability to continue providing Veterans with the quality care that they have earned."

This new technology refers to the VLER HEALTH program that the Indianapolis VA is now implementing in partnership with the Regenstrief Institute and Indiana Health Information Exchange (IHIE). This VA-IHIE demonstration project is intended to create the capacity for VA institutions to exchange health information with community partners.

Investigators from the VA HSR\&D Center on Implementing Evidence-Based Practice are active collaborators in building and implementing this program. The VA-IHIE program provides the bi-directional exchange of health information between VA and non-VA providers. Based on our pilot study of linked VA-IHIE data, investigators are conducting an evaluation of the impact of the VA-IHIE demonstration project upon health care quality and cost of Veterans by taking advantage of the initiation of the implementation as a natural experiment.

Detailed description: This study will perform a pre-post evaluation of the VA-IHIE implementation, with a concurrent control group, among Veterans seen at the Indianapolis VA. Data on care received by Veterans will be obtained for one year before, and one year after, VA-IHIE enrollment. Patients will be recruited into the VA-IHIE program in a rolling manner over the course of a year, and thus will have different calendar intervals of follow-up. For purposes of evaluation, investigators will approach the VA-IHIE implementation as a patient-directed intervention given that additional information available from the exchange is available only on a patient-by-patient basis, i.e., a provider cannot use exchange information available for one patient in the care of another. Although the VA-IHIE program will be implemented at the site level, patients will be enrolled individually.

Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* Veteran's receiving care at the Indianapolis VAMC at least one year prior and one year post VA-IHIE enrollment
* Veteran's receiving care from a facility other than the Indianapolis VAMC one year prior and one year post VA-IHIE enrollment

Exclusion Criteria:

None

Primary outcomes:
measure: Understanding Utilization of Healthcare Procedures by Veterans According to Source of Data
timeFrame: 2 years
measure: Effect of Health Information Exchange on Cost
timeFrame: 2 Years
measure: Health Care Quality: Affect of HIE on LDL Levels of Participants.
timeFrame: 3 years
Secondary outcomes:
measure: Health Care Quality: Care Sensitive Admissions
timeFrame: 3 years
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Indianapolis
country: United States
facility: Richard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center, Indianapolis, IN
state: Indiana
Study officials:
affiliation: Richard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center, Indianapolis, IN
name: David A Haggstrom, MD
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References:
citation: Dixon BE, Haggstrom DA, Weiner M. Implications for informatics given expanding access to care for Veterans and other populations. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2015 Jul;22(4):917-20. doi: 10.1093/jamia/ocv019. Epub 2015 Mar 31.
citation: Kho AN, Cashy JP, Jackson KL, Pah AR, Goel S, Boehnke J, Humphries JE, Kominers SD, Hota BN, Sims SA, Malin BA, French DD, Walunas TL, Meltzer DO, Kaleba EO, Jones RC, Galanter WL. Design and implementation of a privacy preserving electronic health record linkage tool in Chicago. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2015 Sep;22(5):1072-80. doi: 10.1093/jamia/ocv038. Epub 2015 Jun 23.
citation: French DD, Margo CE, Campbell RR. Enhancing postmarketing surveillance: continuing challenges. Br J Clin Pharmacol. 2015 Oct;80(4):615-7. doi: 10.1111/bcp.12658. Epub 2015 Jun 1. No abstract available.
citation: Byrne C, Hunolt E, Bouhaddou O, Pan E, Botts NE, Mercincavage L, Olinger L, Banty K, Bennett J, Weiner M, Haggstrom DA, Cromwell T. Performance evaluation framework for the Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record (VLER) health information exchange pilot program. AMIA ... Annual Symposium proceedings / AMIA Symposium. AMIA Symposium. 2013 Nov 16; 1(1):162.
citation: Dixon BE, Miller T, Overhage JM. Barriers to achieving the last mile in health information exchange: A survey of small hospitals and physician practices. Jounal of Healthcare Information Management. 2013 Oct 3; 27(4):53-58.
citation: French DD, Dixon BE, Perkins SM, Myers LJ, Weiner M, Zillich AJ, Haggstrom DA. Short-Term Medical Costs of a VHA Health Information Exchange: A CHEERS-Compliant Article. Medicine (Baltimore). 2016 Jan;95(2):e2481. doi: 10.1097/MD.0000000000002481.
citation: Dixon BE, Ofner S, Perkins SM, Myers LJ, Rosenman MB, Zillich AJ, French DD, Weiner M, Haggstrom DA. Which veterans enroll in a VA health information exchange program? J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2017 Jan;24(1):96-105. doi: 10.1093/jamia/ocw058. Epub 2016 Jun 6.
citation: Dixon BE, Barboza K, Jensen AE, Bennett KJ, Sherman SE, Schwartz MD. Measuring Practicing Clinicians' Information Literacy. An Exploratory Analysis in the Context of Panel Management. Appl Clin Inform. 2017 Feb 15;8(1):149-161. doi: 10.4338/ACI-2016-06-RA-0083.
citation: Nguyen KA, Haggstrom DA, Ofner S, Perkins SM, French DD, Myers LJ, Rosenman M, Weiner M, Dixon BE, Zillich AJ. Medication Use among Veterans across Health Care Systems. Appl Clin Inform. 2017 Mar 8;8(1):235-249. doi: 10.4338/ACI-2016-10-RA-0184.