OHCA Invites Continued Feedback Regarding OKSHINE/HIE
OHCA Invites Continued Feedback Regarding OKSHINE/HIE
Oklahoma City, OK – SB1369, passed in the 2022 legislative session, requires OHCA to set up a separate office, the Office of the State Coordinator for Health Information Exchange, with responsibility to oversee a statewide health information exchange with patient data from all healthcare providers. The proposed rules for the program were first introduced in September and have gone through two rounds of public comments, resulting in more than 300 comments. These comments, along with input from the public and dozens of stakeholder engagement meetings, are guiding and informing the implementation process. OHCA is grateful for the feedback of Oklahoma patients and providers.
The opportunity to utilize the HIE is significant, with potential to reduce adverse drug events, redundant testing, and promote a culture of improved collaboration among different healthcare providers, resulting in a more streamlined, holistic health care approach for Oklahomans. The agency understands the importance of privacy considerations in this effort and is working to ensure best practices and appropriate privacy safeguards, including all legal and licensure requirements under HIPAA and other applicable state and federal laws.
The proposed rules allow temporary exemptions based on size, technological capability or financial hardship. OHCA is actively engaging with providers to discuss exemption criteria for specific provider types regarding transmission of data restrictions, with a particular focus on behavioral health, and are expecting to revise the proposed rules to apply exemptions based on provider type.
After the passage of SB 1369, the rule proposal is the first step in a thorough process to develop regulations that will achieve the desired benefits for Oklahoma’s citizens, serving the needs of providers and patients alike. To ensure your concerns are addressed, OHCA invites you to be a part of the conversation. Please send your feedback through the new comments feature on oklahoma.gov/ohca/okshine. This page will be updated with new information as it becomes available.
I am the financial secretary for the Enid Community clinic in Enid, OK. We serve at mostly undocumented population who have no other source of healthcare, which me may only see once or twice a year. We operate on a yearly budget of about $35,000.00 utilizing all volunteer staff. If SB-1639 does not take into consideration the indigent clinic across the state many of them will have to close their doors, ours included. Please take into consideration the needs of the small volunteer clinics so we are able to continue to give care to the medically underserved
Vicki Janky
I have a rural dental clinic with two new associates. I am in the process of slowing down and looking forward to more time off as I approach retirement in the future. We see a large number of children on SoonerCare and the prices are already much lower than our usual and customary fees. This not only creates a financial hardship, it could require an additional employee to input this data. Dental software is not the same as medical software or hospital computers. I also find it unfair that the cost for a hospital or large dental corporation with multiple practitioners and large staff will pay the same as small clinics.