CO, AZ HIEs Announce Name of Regional HIE Set to Boost Interoperability

Two health information exchanges (HIE) in Colorado and Arizona have announced Contexture as the name of a regional HIE set to enhance interoperability and boost patient data sharing across the states.

Colorado Regional Health Information Organization (CORHIO) and Health Current, Arizona's statewide HIE formed the regional HIE under an affiliation agreement signed earlier this year.

The mission of the new company is to advance individual and community health and wellness through enhanced patient data sharing. With greater access to patient data and EHRs, providers can make more informed care decisions, which in turn may lead to higher quality care delivery and improved patient outcomes.

Melissa Kotrys, CEO of Health Current, serves as the CEO of Contexture, and Morgan Honea, CEO of CORHIO, serves as Contexture's executive vice president.

“As a new regional organization, Contexture has the potential to serve communities as the largest health information organization in the West,” Kotrys said in a press release. “For decades we have empowered providers with information on millions of unique patients and today are in a position to better serve the needs of national payers, health systems, and state and federal agencies.”

Contexture will manage the existing data exchange needs of approximately 1,800 healthcare organizations across the two states.

In addition to strengthening existing core HIE services in each state, Contexture’s new innovation department will help meet the interoperability needs of key stakeholders with an initial focus on state agencies such as Medicaid.

Contexture also will have a new customer experience department. Other departments will continue their focus in IT operations, policy, finance strategy, business development, human resources, legal and compliance.  

“I am excited to bring new services and offerings to our communities, including our new Innovation team, which possesses unparalleled expertise on how state and healthcare policy, financing, and operations work,” said Honea, who oversees several departments at the new organization. “This will be a tremendous resource for Arizona, Colorado and beyond.”

Lisa Brown, vice president of strategy & growth at STRIDE Community Health Center, serves as the chairperson for Contexture’s Board of Directors. Brown joins 19 other board members who represent large health systems, labs, state government agencies, health plans, behavioral health providers, and safety net providers across Arizona and Colorado.

In an October 2020 interview, Honea told EHRIntelligence that while the regional HIE’s focus is on serving care organizations in Arizona and Colorado, the company hopes to support larger national and regional clients through its interoperability infrastructure as well.

“We will continue to serve the folks that we serve in our respective states, the way that we always have,” Honea assured. “We will continue to create opportunities to serve the priorities of the various state agencies, where they might be the same, or they might be different.”

Honea said there are also broad opportunities to serve larger national and regional clients. Administrative simplification and coordination across technology will ideally drive that mission, ultimately improving ROI for stakeholders.

“We are trying to develop a model that would be encouraging of other HIE's to join and be comfortable in a model that is fair and equitable in terms of governance, operations, and autonomy, but it focuses on leveraging economies of scale and technology commonalities,” he concluded. “That is absolutely a top priority of this effort.”