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Talking to Patients about the HIE

Supporting Patient Conversations about healthEconnect Alaska
Table of Contents

Your Role Matters

Patients often turn to their healthcare team with questions about the HIE. As a trusted source of information, your organization plays an important role in helping patients understand how health information exchange supports their care.

By helping patients understand the value of participation, you help strengthen the network and support more complete information for everyone involved in a patient’s care.

Lead with Stories

Patients often connect more readily with stories than technical explanations. The following hypothetical scenarios, inspired by real-world experiences, illustrate how the HIE supports timely, coordinated care by helping healthcare teams access information more quickly when needed.

James: Connecting the dots across multiple encounters

Frequent work travel and visits to multiple emergency departments leave James without a provider seeing the full picture. Through the HIE’s event notifications, his primary care provider recognizes a pattern and helps him manage anxiety more effectively.

Wassilie: A stroke emergency in rural Alaska

When Wassilie experiences symptoms of a stroke in his village, timely access to information helps support critical treatment decisions. This story highlights how secure access to information across participating organizations can help providers make informed decisions when every minute matters.

Alex: Addressing health- related social needs

After a hospitalization, Alex’s recovery is complicated by challenges related to housing and food insecurity. Through an initiative using the HIE’s Population Explorer tool, her care team identifies opportunities to connect her with community resources, supporting her health beyond the walls of the clinic.

Key Messaging

The HIE helps support better-informed care.

Health information exchange allows authorized providers to securely access information from participating organizations, helping support more coordinated care and reducing the need for patients to repeat their health history.

Information is only shared with authorized healthcare providers.

The HIE simply organizes records from different facilities, and makes them available in one convenient location.  Healthcare providers must have a legitimate reason to access a patient’s information, and must belong to an organization involved in that patient’s care. HIE users are subject the same privacy and security requirements that govern all health records.

Privacy and security are priorities.

The HIE uses safeguards to protect patient information and supports compliance with state and federal privacy requirements.

Patients have choices.

Patients may ask questions and can learn more through healthEconnect Alaska’s FAQ resources for patients. They may choose to opt out of their data being shared.

Additional Resources for Patient Conversations

Patients may have questions about health information exchange, privacy, or participation. The following resources can help support these conversations and answer common questions.

Patient FAQs (Online)

Web-based FAQs provide answers to common questions about health information exchange, privacy, security, and participation and can be easily shared with patients.

Patient FAQs (Printable PDFs)

Printer-friendly versions of the Patient FAQ are available for both general HIE questions and 42 CFR Part 2 protected information, making them easy to share during patient conversations or provide as take-home resources.

Getting Help

  • Existing Participant: If you a are an existing participant and need help or want to schedule additional training, email your healthEconnect Alaska account manager.

  • If you are not an existing participant or you are not sure who your healthEconnect Alaska account manager is, reach out to us at: info@healthEconnectAK.org or call 907.770.2626.

Resource Page

The onboarding pathway provides a structured introduction to the HIE, but all resource materials are also available individually through our Resource Library. Browse guides, videos, FAQs, and training materials at any time to support your ongoing learning and day-to-day use of the HIE.