Evaluation of State HIE Program

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NORC led the evaluation of the HITECH-funded, State Health Information Exchange (HIE) Cooperative Agreements Program (State HIE Program), a $560 million program to promote and advance HIE. The purpose of this evaluation was to provide a comprehensive understanding to policy-makers and others about the effectiveness of the planning, implementation, and stakeholder experiences with the program.

NORC supported states by providing technical assistance on the design and implementation of states’ self-evaluation plans.

NORC designed and conducted a mixed-methods evaluation of the program. To gather formative and summative information on program implementation, NORC reviewed state strategic and operational plans, conducted detailed case studies of eleven states, and held 84 stakeholder discussions with key health IT stakeholders and state HIE leadership. As part of the site visits, NORC also held focus groups with providers to gain insight on their experiences with HIE in their respective states. These evaluation activities resulted in a series of reports on states’ implementation progress, made available on ONC’s healthit.gov website. NORC also conducted the first National survey, assessing clinical laboratories capacity and actual electronic exchange of lab results. NORC designed, fielded and analyzed the results of a survey, to assess the level of HIE occurring in states from the perspective of hospitals and independent labs.

Findings from NORC’s evaluation provided critical formative feedback to ONC and to State HIE grantees on their activities. It also provided formative and summative information on how the State HIE Program contributed to promoting the electronic exchange of health information nationwide