If you have ever visited more than one doctor, you already know the problem. Your primary care doctor has one set of records, your specialist has another. Your urgent care visit from last year, somewhere else entirely. Pulling all that information together when it is needed most has long been one of healthcare’s biggest problems. In Connecticut, a solution called “Connie” is working to change that.
What Is a Health Information Exchange (And Why Does It Matter)?
Many people are familiar with the term “electronic medical record” or EMR. But an EMR only captures what happens within one practice or health system. When patients see multiple providers, their information ends up scattered across dozens of disconnected systems.
A health information exchange (HIE) helps eliminate fragmented patient records by gathering data from multiple sources into a single, unified location. As Renee Broadbent, Chief Operating Officer at SoNE HEALTH, explains, the HIE centralizes all incoming information so organizations can access what they need in real time, giving care teams a comprehensive, 360‑degree view of the patient.
Connecticut’s HIE is Connie, and the scale of the problem it addresses is striking. According to Jennifer Searls, Executive Director of Connie, the state has more than 350 different EMR systems, that’s remarkable for a state of its size. “You have little pieces of information about a patient in various medical records and no easy way to pull all that information together so that a patient’s provider is able to see their complete information in one place. That is what Connie was built to try to solve,” she states.
How Connie Came to Be?
Connecticut has tried (and failed) to launch a statewide HIE multiple times before. That changed in 2017, when the state legislature passed a law enabling the development of an HIE program and created an independent nonprofit organization to run it. Connie officially launched in 2021.
Two things helped it succeed where earlier efforts had not. First, there was a broad collective will across the state’s healthcare community to finally make it work. Second, COVID-19 made the need for connected health data impossible to ignore. Searls recalls that the pandemic exposed just how siloed the state’s systems really were. “Things like COVID test results and COVID vaccine records were not as widely shared as organizations would have hoped. So, we had these tailwinds of not wanting to fail at an HIE, and then also the experience within COVID,” she shares.
Today, Connie operates with a strong commitment to transparency. Board meetings are open to the public, minutes are available to anyone, and recordings can be viewed online. “We are really meant to be a neutral and trusted entity across all of those stakeholders,” assures Searls, referring to the mix of providers, payers, hospitals, and state agencies that Connie serves.
Real Benefits for Patients, Providers, and Beyond
For provider organizations like SoNE HEALTH, the benefits are wide-ranging. Care managers can log in and see a patient’s full history in one place, in real time, rather than chasing records across multiple systems. This is especially valuable for complex patients who require intensive support.
Broadbent describes what that looks like in practice. “Our care managers use it when managing and dealing with patients. You can log in and see a lot of data on a patient while you are talking to them,” she explains. “It gives you a truly comprehensive view by centralizing information in one place and updating it in real time, which is especially valuable when a patient has seen multiple specialists or has fragmented data across different systems.”
Connie also plays a growing role in value-based care. Many provider contracts require clinical data to meet quality metrics, for example, information like A1C checks, cancer screenings, and medication adherence. Without an HIE, gathering that data is slow, expensive, and unreliable. “Having an effective HIE takes all of that away because you get it in a single location,” offers Broadbent. “The value that it brings, especially one that is as good and as effective as Connie, is invaluable across many different use cases.”
The benefits extend well beyond individual providers’ offices. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner uses Connie to conduct death investigations more efficiently. Connecticut Poison Control uses it to coordinate care for potential poisoning cases in real time. Searls describes the reach of the platform this way: “When we develop this infrastructure that connects healthcare organizations across the state, it really can be leveraged in additional ways to make things easier and more cost-effective for state agencies, providers, and frankly, us as taxpayers.”
For patients, Connie offers something that has long been missing: a single, consolidated view of their own health records. As Broadbent puts it, “An HIE gives you that opportunity. It brings everything into one place, so you’re not trying to manage multiple records or track down scattered information. It empowers you to take control of your own data, something everyone should be able to do.”
The Cost? Nothing.
Connecting to Connie is free for providers. Depending on which EMR a practice uses, there may be a small interface fee, but Connie has worked directly with many of the most widely used EMR platforms to build shared connections that make the process quick, simple, and often at no cost
About This Episode
This article is based on a conversation from the Crushing Healthcare podcast. Guests Jennifer Searls, Executive Director of Connie, and Renee Broadbent, Chief Operating Officer at SoNE HEALTH, shared their firsthand experience building and using Connecticut’s statewide health information exchange. To listen to the full episode, search for “Crushing Healthcare” on your favorite podcast platform.
Listen here