Originally published in The Daily Sentinel, Grand Junction on June 27, 2026. Republished on Contexture.org on July 27, 2026. The original article can be found HERE.
A regional health information exchange is a difference-maker for remote communities that depend on faraway doctors who aren’t always accessible at a moment’s notice. Brittney Plummer is the clinic director of Rangely Family Medicine, a comprehensive primary care clinic associated with Rangely District Hospital in Rangely, Colorado.
Picture this: a patient comes in for a routine medication check. She’s been seen by a cardiologist in the biggest town nearby, two hours away, and her regimen has changed. She’s not entirely sure what was adjusted, but we need to know before we touch anything. So we call the specialist’s office. We leave a message. We wait. Maybe they’ll call back in three days. Maybe longer. Meanwhile, our patient is sitting in front of us, and we have a decision to make.
That used to be our only option. Thankfully, it isn’t anymore.
Today, one of our medical assistants pulls up that specialist’s notes through Colorado’s health information exchange, Contexture, in seconds. We see exactly what changed, why it changed, and what to watch for. We adjust safely, the patient goes home, and the loop closes the same day.
Hear from Brittney Plummer, Clinic Director of Rangely Family Medicine
I’m the clinic director at Rangely Family Medicine in a town of about 2,000 people in northwestern Colorado with no stoplight, one grocery store, and one clinic within 50 miles. We’re an hour from the nearest town in any direction, and for many of our patients, especially our elderly population, that hour might as well be a world away.
We do what we can to bring care to our community. A neurologist visits twice a month. A podiatrist comes once a month. An orthopedic surgeon and a cardiologist rotate through the hospital. We have telehealth behavioral health visits available twice a week. Every one of those appointment slots fills immediately. If you miss your window, or if your condition can’t wait, you travel, assuming you can find a way to get there.
I’m also an EMT with our hospital-owned ambulance service. I understand what it means when someone’s care is delayed. I also know we don’t have the staff capacity to chase records in the old-fashioned way.
Interoperability, or the ability for different computer and software systems to exchange data freely and securely, is something healthcare organizations everywhere are still working to get right. In a large city, a patient who sees multiple specialists may be able to choose doctors within the same health system, eliminating the need for data to flow between different organizations.
Our patients’ care may span Grand Junction, Denver, and sometimes facilities across the border in Utah. Every specialist visit is a different system, a different EHR, and a different set of fax numbers to chase. A regional health information exchange is the only infrastructure that can connect it all.
We use Contexture every day. Our medical assistants and providers pull chart notes from outside facilities. Our care coordinator uses it to track ER visits and patient admissions. Our quality team uses it for reports on gaps in care and well-child data. It’s how we close referral loops, catch medication changes, and keep our patients from falling through the cracks between systems that weren’t built to talk to each other.
If you run a hospital, a specialist group, or an imaging center anywhere in a region where patients must travel to receive care, your participation in the HIE directly affects the quality of care those patients receive when they come home.
Statewide HIEs cut out the middleman, giving us direct access to records without having to sign a separate agreement or get a specific staff member on the phone. It’s just there. For us, “just there” is a big deal.
In Rangely, everyone knows everyone. When a patient comes through our door, there’s a decent chance I know their family. That kind of care — personal, community-rooted, hometown medicine — is something we take seriously.
