The first of 23 emergency departments in California's Orange County has gone live on CalRHIO, the planned statewide health information exchange, as data exchange was turned on at Coastal Communities Hospital in Santa Ana, Calif., last week. Working with the local Orange County Partnership Regional Health Information Organization (OCPRHIO), CalRHIO will bring the other 22 EDs online in the next five months, starting with three others that, like Coastal Communities, are owned by Integrated Healthcare Holdings.

At first, CalRHIO users will be able to access the records of 380,000 enrollees in CalOptima, a safety-net insurance administrator that covers Orange County residents in the Medi-Cal, Medicare, and Healthy Kids programs. Next year, CalRHIO plans on adding additional data sources, including prescription histories, laboratory results and other, claims-derived clinical information. Future plans call for a secure clinical communication network.

Utah-based vendor Medicity is providing the interoperability technology for the network.

For more information:
- read this CalRHIO press release (.pdf)

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