Cross Sector Data Sharing

Facilitating collaboration to effectively share and use data across health, behavioral, social, education, criminal justice, and government sectors of care.

What Is Cross Sector Data Sharing?

Cross Sector Data Sharing (CSDS) enables secure data exchange across different care sectors to support informed, person-centered decision-making and improved care coordination. CSDS also supports data analysis to better understand complex health and social issues and inform the efficient use of limited resources.

In addition to improved healthcare and process outcomes, some of the long-term goals of CSDS are to support evolving payment models that address Health-Related Social Needs (HRSN), as well as to improve data access for regional decisionmakers to reduce negative and promote positive determinants of health.

MiHIN’s Cross Sector Data Sharing Program

MiHIN’s CSDS Program facilitates the relationships and complex understanding between the sectors wishing to exchange information to promote sustainable and efficient data exchange.

MiHIN works collaboratively with partners to analyze the current environment, maximize the use of existing infrastructure, and utilize nationally accepted data standards to mitigate duplicative efforts. This collaborative work informs strategies at the local, regional, and state levels.

Solutions

MiHIN’s CSDS Program Strategy Tenets

Analyze the existing environment, barriers, and data governance for specific instances of data sharing across sectors of care
Facilitate the review of findings with decisionmakers from involved sectors of care to create the alignment and trust necessary for data movement to occur
Collaborate with involved sectors of care to facilitate solutions that adhere to emerging best practices, national standards, and established interoperability tools whenever possible

Pilot Projects
(as of July 2025)

Integrating Health Information Exchange into School-Based Behavioral Health Care

In Michigan, school-based behavioral health providers support students’ behavioral health needs, yet they lack access to critical health information available to other providers across the state. In an innovative collaboration, MiHIN, mdlogix, and Monroe County Intermediate School District partnered to explore the feasibility and value of enabling school-based behavioral health providers to access healthcare data through MiHIN’s MIGateway® tool.

Coming Soon: Summary of Findings

The Interoperable Referrals for Assessment Pilot

This pilot tests modifications to the existing FHIR® Implementation Guide for clinical care meant to address gaps and data model alignment discovered during national co-design processes. Specifically, this pilot tests the creation of a referral for assessment message, allowing healthcare teams to refer an individual to a community-based organization for a social care needs assessment. This referral aligns with the Gravity Project’s social care co-design model, which highlights that community partners who have traditionally performed these assessments are best equipped to assess needs, eligibility, and available resources.

The pilot’s first stage brought to light the need for this adaptation to the existing FHIR standards, and that this adaptation can continue to work until an official standard is produced. Initially conducted in a synthetic environment, the pilot will move to live data exchange after a national standard is finalized.

2021-2022; Cross Sector Data Sharing

Despite exceptional strain on State of Michigan human services programs and resources during 2020-2021, in late 2021 MDHHS was able to convene a new SDoH program team, bringing dedicated technical and subject matter expertise to catalyze and guide work to enhance social care and reduce health disparities. A request was made to MiHIN to conduct another series of statewide SDoH workshops to better understand the current state of SDoH data capture and exchange within and across sectors and to prepare to address the full complexity of the work necessary to equitably manage cross sector data sharing. The following organizations provided critical design and partnership:

January 11 – Community Based Organizations (Slides)

January 18 – Health Providers & Teams (Slides)

January 25 – Government Entities (Slides)

Read the Whitepaper

2020; SDOH Use Case

In December 2019, as the State Innovation Model (SIM) demonstration moved toward its conclusion, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) requested that the Michigan Health Information Network Shared Services (MiHIN) convene a series of statewide SDoH workshops. The workshop series built upon the work of the Community Health Innovation Regions (CHIRs) in developing SDoH screening and Clinical-Community Linkages to enhance cross-sector care. The ultimate goal of the workshop series was to inform a statewide SDoH Use Case that would enable SDoH data exchange between health care organizations, community social service organizations, and other key care providers for purposes of direct care coordination as well as population health assessment and improvement.

SDOH Kickoff Meeting

SDOH Workshop #2

SDOH Workshop #3

Read the Whitepaper

Learn More about MiHIN SDOH Use Case

2016-2019; Coordinating the Care Coordinators

In response to the critical and complex interactions between medical, behavioral, social and economic factors in maintaining and improving health, and the recognition by our stakeholders that people move between organizations as they receive care, MiHIN began planning to support enhanced collection of social care (SDoH) data and improved cross-sector data exchange in 2016. The Coordinating the Care Coordinators Workshop series was hosted by the Michigan Primary Care Consortium (MPCC) with support from the staff of the Michigan Health Information Network Shared Services (MiHIN) and a whitepaper was created. MDHHS initiated a plan via MiHIN to develop a mechanism to establish care coordinators within our Health Directory and assign them a unique ID, for use similar to an NPI. Doing so would provide coordinator’s the opportunity to utilize other MiHIN products and services like Active Care Relationships Service (ACRS), Admit Discharge Transfer Service (ADT’s), MIGateway, and Direct Secure Messaging product (Diretto).

Read the Whitepaper

Learn More and Onboard

MiHIN SDOH Program/ Healthcare Provider Workgroup

MiHIN assembled a limited working group of boots-on-the-ground healthcare providers to make recommendations on our SDOH and Interoperable Referrals Use Cases and associated services.

The working group meets several times to:
• Help to refine minimum data needs that would allow an interoperable referral to occur
• React to a draft of information that a clinician would find valuable to know about social care (social care snapshot)
• Provide feedback about social care reporting needs from a healthcare provider perspective

MiHIN SDoH HCP Workgroup 1 (05-27-2022)

MiHIN SDoH HCP Workgroup 2 (06-07-2022)

MiHIN SDoH HCP Workgroup 3 (07-2022)