DENVER, Colo. – January 28, 2011 – CORHIO, the Colorado Regional Health Information Organization, has been awarded $1.7 million by the Health Information Exchange (HIE) Challenge Grant Program run by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC). CORHIO was selected for innovation in the area of care improvement and cost reduction for patients transitioning between hospitals, long-term care facilities and other post-acute care providers.

Nearly one of every five patients discharged from hospitals in the United States is readmitted within 30 days, according to New England Journal of Medicine. Health information exchange (HIE) is a powerful tool for improving communication and coordination across care settings, which can improve quality of care and help reduce costs.

The Challenge Grant allows CORHIO to support long-term and post-acute care providers in Boulder, Colorado Springs, Pueblo and the San Luis Valley as they work to implement processes to improve care transitions to and from hospitals in their communities. Following completion of the grant, CORHIO officials say they are committed to sharing the processes and outcomes resulting from this innovative project for the benefit of communities throughout Colorado and across the nation.

“We are so pleased to have additional funding to support the inclusion of long-term care providers in health information exchange efforts,” said Phyllis Albritton, CORHIO executive director. “There are so many communities in Colorado that are interested in partnering with CORHIO to improve care transitions for their patients, and we are excited to begin working with them.”

The CORHIO award is part of $16 million that ONC has awarded in new Challenge Grants to encourage breakthrough innovations for HIE that can be leveraged widely to support nationwide HIE and interoperability.

CORHIO is one of eight organizations nationally selected for the award for developing innovative and scalable solutions in one of five key areas:
1. Achieving health goals through health information exchange
2. Improving long-term and post-acute care transitions
3. Consumer-mediated information exchange
4. Enabling enhanced query for patient care
5. Fostering distributed population-level analytics

About CORHIO
CORHIO is dedicated to improving health care quality for all Coloradans through health information exchange (HIE). As the state designated entity for HIE, CORHIO collaborates with health care stakeholders including physicians, hospitals, clinics, public health, long-term care, laboratories, health plans and patients to develop secure systems and processes for sharing clinical information. CO-REC, a CORHIO initiative, assists primary care providers in adopting, implementing and becoming meaningful users of electronic health record (EHR) systems. CORHIO is a not-for-profit supported by grants, including awards from the Colorado Health Foundation and from federal ARRA HITECH funds. For more information about CORHIO, please visit www.corhio.org.
###