Opinion: It’s important that CT has an health information exchange. I know from experience

Hartford Courant – Tuesday, August 19, 2025
By Brian Bell

Brian Bell live in Manchester, Conn.

Exhausting. Dizzying. Painful.

As a chronic migraine sufferer, this isn’t just how I describe one of my frequent headaches. It was also how I felt about the frustrating experience of trying to navigate the health care system.

From the time I was first diagnosed, my life went from MySpace to MyChart pretty quickly. By 16, I was seeing several specialists in addition to my primary care provider for neurological disorders. Still, I’ve always considered myself lucky to live in a state with so many top-class medical systems where I can seek care for the multiple chronic conditions I juggle.

But managing my health became almost like a full-time job, and COVID made it worse. Since the onset of the pandemic, I have averaged three trips to the emergency room annually. Though I try to avoid visiting hospitals at all costs, sometimes my symptoms leave me no choice. Too often, I have been burdened with the responsibility of alerting doctors about prescriptions I cannot take due to the risk of major drug interactions. I would get especially anxious visiting ERs with migraines, fearing the clinicians didn’t know crucial information about my medications and conditions that can be hard for me to convey in the middle of a blinding episode.

Even during regular office visits with primary care providers or specialists, I found myself spending more than half the appointment recapping or updating providers on information that could already be found in my electronic health record, or EHR.

That’s why I’m glad to live in a state with a designated health information exchange (HIE), which allows providers to share health data with each other no matter which facility they work from or what EHR charting system they use. I’m passionate about advocating for the safe and protected flow of health data in Connecticut. That’s why I also sit on the Patient and Family Advisory Council for Connie, Connecticut’s HIE: to make sure providers know there are ways to make care delivery easier on patients, especially those who are more complex like me.

Serving on PFAC gives me the opportunity to provide the patient perspective to Connie decisionmakers as they iterate the HIE’s tools and services, including the new Patient Portal that gives individuals free access to their health records. I’ve worked in health care and already had a familiarity with EHRs, giving me a well-rounded understanding of the benefits and obstacles from multiple perspectives.

I know for residents less familiar with EHRs, it can be concerning to think of your health data being shared. But as a frequent healthcare consumer, I know there’s great – even life-saving – value in allowing provider teams to have the complete picture of health at the point of care. HIEs reduce unnecessary duplicate tests and protect against drug interactions or other dangers that can be avoided. Even the time saved from having to catch doctors up during appointments makes room for much more meaningful interactions during office visits, meaning we all can focus on advancing health goals.

From my personal, lived experience, I can say the very existence of a state HIE like Connie is empowering for patients. And I want other patients to know they don’t have to go it alone; there are people like me fighting to improve the system from the inside for everyone’s benefit. If I can save one person from dealing with the headaches – literal and metaphorical – that I’ve had to deal with, then serving on Connie’s PFAC and spreading the word about the benefits of an HIE will have been worth it.

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