Chesapeake Regional Information System for our Patients

The Chesapeake Regional Information System for our Patients (CRISP) is a nonprofit organization created to function as Maryland’s state-designated health information exchange (HIE), by the Maryland Health Care Commission. CRISP currently serves as the HIE for Maryland and the District of Columbia. CRISP is advised by a wide range of stakeholders who are responsible for healthcare throughout the region.

Health information exchange allows clinical information to move electronically among disparate health information systems. The goal of the HIE is to deliver the right health information to the right place at the right time – providing safer, timelier, efficient, effective, equitable, patient centered care. In doing so, CRISP offers a suite of tools aimed at improving the facilitation of care for their service region’s providers. CRISP was created by Johns Hopkins Medicine, MedStar Health, the University of Maryland Medical System and Erickson Retirement Communities, and receives input from a wide range of sources, including clinicians, hospitals, patients, privacy advocates, payers, and regulators and policymakers.

Audacious Inquiry is one of several contracted service providers and developers that works with CRISP to enable and manage exchange services and initially served as the program director for the effort. Initiate Systems (IBM) and Axolotl Corporation (Ingenix) were selected in 2009 to provide software as a service to enable clinical information exchange via CRISP. CRISP replaced Axolotl with Mirth Results (NextGen) in 2011.

In 2006, CRISP began at a Spring meeting between John Erickson and the CIOs of Maryland’s three largest hospital systems, asking how to make medical records for seniors available when they visited the hospital. By 2008, CRISP had partnered with MHCC to plan an HIE for Maryland, the processed engaged dozens of healthcare stakeholders. CRISP received $10 million in seed funding through an adjustment in the reimbursement rates for participating hospitals. The Office of the National Coordinator awarded Maryland $9.3 million to implement statewide health information exchange through CRISP. In the 2009 legislative session, Governor Martin O’Malley signed into law House Bill 706, which gives the Maryland Health Care Commission (MHCC) the authority to regulate the state’s insurance industry to provide incentives for doctors to connect their practices to CRISP’s health information exchange. Maryland's Health IT Extension Center became a reality in 2010 with a grant from the department of Health and Human Services for $5.5 million. Today, CRISP has connected with all of the acute care hospitals in Maryland and DC, and has rolled out several new services, and dozens of new features. CRISP has even expanded their connectivity through partnerships with neighboring HIEs.