2007 Survey of Regional Health Information Organization [RHIO] Finance

[rnformatics]

The 2007 Survey of Regional Health Information Organization Finance

In 2006, fifty RHIOs responded to our first survey of RHIO finance. We invite your participation in this important second year of the national survey focusing on how RHIOs and other health information exchanges are initially funded, and then financed on an ongoing basis. Qualified respondents who complete the questionnaire will receive a copy of a report summary developed especially for RHIOs. A full-scale analysis, to be published in June, will be available for purchase, and qualified respondents will receive reduced pricing.

What the Field Will Learn from the Survey

The survey is constructed to help illuminate how RHIOs are addressing organizational, service and funding challenges at different stages of their development. For this reason, we are asking for responses from both early-phase efforts (even before an organization has been named) and mature, fully operational networks, and all stages in between. The streamlined questionnaire does not require disclosure of detailed accounting data; substantial portions can be filled out by anyone familiar with the organization's governance, service offerings and revenue, if any. We expect the data to reveal solutions to challenges shared by RHIOs across the country. Data will be reviewed from a finance perspective, and analyzed to shed light on the following questions:

• How are RHIO finances different during startup, transition and production phases?
• What forms of contributed and earned revenues are significant at what time?
• Based on the experience of others who have preceded them, at what developmental stages can startups anticipate the arrival of funding from various sources?
• Who are the financial decision makers?
• How long does it take to move from an unstructured collaborative to actual data exchange?
• What mix of services and fees are successful RHIOs deploying?

Survey results will offer new wisdom from actual practice, and will help RHIO planners to focus their efforts on activities that others in the field are finding most fruitful. The 2007 survey will provide year-over-year data, and may reveal the directions being taken by RHIO organizers to move toward sustainability.

To preview the survey questionnaire, visit this link: http://hittransition.com/rhio2007/rfs/surveypreview.htm

To begin completing the questionnaire, visit this link: http://rhiosurvey.hittransition.com/instrument.htm

Please Help the Data-gathering Effort

The survey team's goal is to reach as many RHIO/HIE projects as possible. If you are involved in a RHIO startup effort or an established RHIO/HIE organization, please take the survey. We encourage all RHIO organizers to participate, regardless of the RHIO's stage of development, and multiple individuals from the same organization may complete questionnaires. Please let your colleagues and associates know about the survey through listservs and other contacts both within and outside your organization. The direct survey link to send is http://rhiosurvey.hittransition.com/instrument.htm.

Privacy

Survey responses will be de-identified to preserve privacy and the proprietary nature of the information. Individual respondent organizations will in no way be ranked or otherwise compared to one another. Additional protections may be reviewed on the privacy policy page.

Deadline

In order to meet the reporting schedule, the survey closes April 20. You will have until that time to complete the online questionnaire.

CLICK HERE TO TAKE THE SURVEY