Author: Tia L. Tinney, Kentucky Health Information Exchange and SERCH Coordinator

Being ready for an emergency sometimes means moving out of harm’s way, even evacuating across state lines. Sometimes while you’re away from home, you need medical care for chronic conditions, sudden illness or injury. If you evacuated to another state, getting critical health information to the local hospital or healthcare provider can be problematic.

To help solve this problem for you and support patient care after a wide-spread emergency, the HHS Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) undertook a new effort to make critical health information of residents impacted by a disaster accessible across multiple states.

States in the Gulf, Midwest and East Coast formed partnerships that allow for the exchange of critical health information for patients unable to visit their regular doctors or hospitals. This preparedness partnership is part of the work being done by the Southeast Regional Collaboration for the Health Information Exchange (SERCH).

So what is SERCH? The acronym itself is synonymous with its mission. Since its inception in April 2010, this coalition of state health information exchange program offices along with federal entities has sought to resolve cross-border barriers to help facilitate a multi-state exchange of health information.

Funded through ONC’s State Health Policy Consortium, SERCH boasts an active membership of state partners to include Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia. At times the group expands to include surrounding states and other participants, depending on the initiative.

These states can exchange health information securely using the web-based Direct Secure Messaging tool. The tool was developed by an ONC-led collaboration effort with broad participation from the health IT industry.

In a natural disaster if you’re in any of SERCH’s participating states, your health care provider can use Direct Secure Messaging to send encrypted health information to another provider. Due to the sensitive nature of the information shared, only authorized users can send and receive the encrypted health information.

This SERCH initiative serves as a model in building a trusted exchange of health information. Through these collaborations, we have learned that states still vary in the implementation and connectivity of their state health information exchange programs, but disasters such as Hurricane Sandy and tornados in Alabama and Missouri have shown us that electronic health record system interoperability is a necessary component in the success of health information exchange.

SERCH promotes the adoption of tools, such as Direct Secure Messaging, by providers in the case of a natural disaster. Going forward, SERCH members hope participating states and their providers can use these tools to achieve a cost-efficient and trusted means of exchanging health information and promote overall better health care.