Formation of the WyHIO

 In 2003, the Wyoming Legislature created the Wyoming Healthcare Commission (WHCC) to develop strategies to improve health care and reduce health care costs for Wyoming citizens.

In 2004, the legislature passed Enrolled Act 31, directing the Commission to create an Information Technology Technical Management Subcommittee (IT2) to study and plan for a statewide interoperable health information exchange network by Oct. 15, 2005.

To help evaluate the feasibility of such an effort and develop a Health Information Technology (HIT) plan for Wyoming, John Snow, Inc. (JSI), a public health consulting firm with expertise in developing plans for implementing HIT, was contracted by the state of Wyoming to assess Wyoming’s electronic health information readiness and make recommendations to the Wyoming Healthcare Commission (WHCC) on how to rapidly increase the utilization of technology for accessing patient health information.

On June 29, 2005, as part of the IT2 committee’s vision resulting from the JSI study process, the WHCC recommended to Governor Freudenthal and the Legislature’s Labor, Health and Social Services Committee that Wyoming form a self-sustaining regional health information organization (RHIO) to facilitate an intrastate, regional interstate and national federal partnership for the rapid deployment of Wyoming’s electronic health information infrastructure.

In July 2005, more than 50 representatives of local, state, and federal government, businesses, medical care providers, and healthcare purchasers and payers gathered to discuss the development of a RHIO for Wyoming. On August 11, 2005, the stakeholder group formalized this RHIO and registered it with the Wyoming Secretary of State’s Office. Pending approval from the Internal Revenue Service, this organization will be established as the nonprofit Wyoming Health Information Organization (WyHIO).