Public Health, Welfare and Labor Committee - Senate and House
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- October 2, 2026
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
9:18
Members would grab your seats we'll go ahead and get started I need a motion to accept the minutes from the last meeting and your second all those in favor say aye all opposed ayes have it we'll move right along to item C discussion of the state healthal alliance for records exchange looks like we're going to have a couple of people to the table Health department
if you guys would introduce yourselves for the record and y'all are recognized to your chiefci
Speaker 29
10:08
officer state epidemiologists department of health don adams chief of
Speaker 31
10:15
everyone I'm Anne Sannifer I'm the director
Speaker 32
10:18
of the office of Health Information Technology that's now housed under the Arkansas department of Health
and J just here today to tell you a little bit about our office and what we do we are the healthal information exchange for the state and what that means is we connect directly to providers hospitals and clinics electronic medical records and we aggregate the data at the health department the data comes in real time and it's available to the patient's care team you have to have a treatment or a provider that's taking care of a patient a payment a health plan that's paying that claim
or operational need so somebody that's helping coordinate the care of that patient that's who's allowed to use our tool traditionally the share tool is meant to be used at a point of care so as a providers taking care of you if they have access to your previous medical records your allergies, your medications, diagnosis, any procedures you have done that is all aggregated into a single central record regardless of
what where you've been so most EMRs traditionally don't talk to each other so you may have her of carere everywhere which is an epic branded platform so Care everywhere is just for epic providers there's like an Athena hub that's just for Athena user but these systems traditionally don't communicate 11 with one another and that's why health information exchanges have been established in just about I think all48 states have health information exchanges
except for Illinois and pennsylvania maybe some state s like Texas and California have multiple HIEs which kind of defeats the purpose of having a central place to house all the medical records when providers have access to this information they are able to make a faster decisions regarding your care they're able to hopefully reduce any duplicate tests because they already have
access to the previous information and then just better safety for us because if they see that you have an allergy to a specific drug or are on a medication that might not work with what they're trying to prescribe they're able to make better informed decisions related to your healthcare. so that's share we are also I should point out Arkansas is an opt out state which means if
you're wondering is my data in there most likely when you completed all those documents when you checked into your provider there's a section on there that allows those records to be shared with share? you are always welcome to opt out if you don't want your records shared electronically but that just means your record can't be shared electronically. Your health insurance plan still has the right to request those records your you know providers they're working on your care still have the right to access that
information so opting out just means your record's not shared electronically and instead it's used either by fax or paper records p re s ent ative
Representative Jeremy Wooldridge
Unverified
13:45
Wwoolwid thank you Mr chairir and thank you for being here right in front of you. I wanted to know and maybe
just start a conversation or get your thoughts that AI component of EHR as a medical health records what is that current component or what does that look like? I know that several states are
talking about legislation and things that limit that component to make sure that they're still the human factor when it comes to medical decision making is that something you guys are working on talking about something we need to be looking
Speaker 32
14:15
at as we move towards the next session I had a feeling you were going to ask about AI so yeah so AI is on its way to healthcare it's here I think whether we like it or not I think we have to cautiously embrace it some providers are using AI I don't think they're using it for clinical decision making. they're using it more I had
one provider tell me he wanted to create a treatment plan for a diabetic woman. so he put her information on to chatgBT or whatever and it created just some a guide for this woman who is diabetic who had very specific conditions so I think providers are using to help them with that more than to actually make decision clinical decisions using AIollow up Mrir who
Representative Jeremy Wooldridge
Unverified
14:59
who I guess for lack of a better word polices or monitors that to
make sure that they are safeguards around that that component in medical records
Speaker 32
15:10
so the electronic medical record vendor would be the one that houses that AI component I have heard like at mercy for example one way AI is being used in a positive way is doctor's notes so you may have heard providers complain and it's very burdensome for them to do what they call pajama notes so after hours record note taking and things like that
AI there's a tool that mercy uses where it's a notetaking AIbot so the provider has a microphone when he enters the room he introduces himself he introduces the the people that are in the room and then AI is able to take those notes for him and then at the end of the day rather than having to type up all the notes or be less engaged during the visit. He can focus more on the patient and let the AIotd take the notes but those are usually monitored like the
provider would enter into a contract directly with that company and the company together with police
Speaker 29
16:15
it now I was just going to add a lot of clinics and hospitals they may have policies in place that regulate the usage of artificial intelligence for their clinical practices so I mean a lot of it may be independently managed by those independent hospitals and clinics. I appreciate
Representative Jeremy Wooldridge
Unverified
16:32
that and I appreciate the notetaking aspect of its understand the value
there I just wonder from an organization standpoint when we look at healthcare across the state we would probably want some uniformity there who would be the agency or who would look at regulating or at least overseeing that to make sure that it's being utilized the same across
Speaker 32
16:55
the state there's been some conversations at the federal level to use AI for fraud waste and abuse with the new administration and I think there's a place for that we'll just if we were to engage with them, we would probably
present it to the board of health and bring that up as because that would be a what we call a new use case it's not something that our data has traditionally been used for so we would present it to the to the board of healthth and let them make
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
17:26
that determination. OK thank you Mr Chair. senator Love thank you Mr Chair and I'm going to stay with the same line of questioning. I just want to know about the informed consent because it was good that that you touched on you know the hospitals having
their different I guess protocols but is there any inf informed consent given to the patients that you know of in
regards to AI treatment. Yeah, not that I'm
Speaker 29
17:52
aware of senator in terms of patients having to provide some type of consent as to whether or not their provider can use a I'm not I'm not familiar with that
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
18:02
we can look into it though all right and then I wanna go back just to the overall
share system now right I'm I'm familiar with I'm trying to make sense of this. I'm familiar with the my chart is is is are you all the back end of my chart is that is that what you're saying you're connecting providers like I use my chart somebody else could use whatever.
Speaker 31
18:27
so if you go to different providers you probably have different my charts that you have to access right souMs they have
Speaker 32
18:33
epic my chart but if I go to ortho Arkansas and they use athena that's a different what they call a patient portal. What
share is like a neutral aggregator. so when these electronic medical records were created you know there was a lot of meaningful use money behind it and they were created in a way where they don't talk to each other so that that was built in that sense that systems don't talk to each other so we need a neutral party a mediator such as an HIE like share to consume those records from different brands right of E emRs into a central location and make that available because otherwise our
provider is not going to have a
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
19:14
full picture of their patients got you right so yeah just I'm put it in my terms
the back end of of those systems OK. secondly let me ask about the information that is collected. Now no none of this information is sold or can
Speaker 32
19:31
you can you talk so our data is allowed to be used for TPO so treatment payment or operational need we require an existing relationship with that patient in order to
view their records so we I don't want to say sell but we do work with health plans and we do provide them data back on their own members and they do pay a fee to participate and share so share the way we're funded as we get a portion of our funds from the federal government through medicaid funding we get a portion of it from providers who pay to participate in the exchange and then we get a portion of our funds from payers who pay to be
able to access their own member records. So for example like a bundled payment right when when Medicaid pays a bundle payment you don't see the individual visits under that patient in a claim or you might not see lab results in a claim but that's important information say for Bluecross one example we do with Blue Cross is we send them all their members A1C results we have a lot of diabetics in Arkansas and a lot of pre diabetics so we send them all those A1c results
on their members and if they identify someone that's pre diabetic, they go ahead and enroll them in a pre diabetic prevention program. So there's things that come across our clinical data that's not available in a traditional claims that's very attractive to health plans to private payers so they do engage with us we have most payers in Arkansas participating in share. so is it just
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
21:06
health plans that have access to this information or is it yeah so we
Speaker 32
21:15
ofccountable care organizations or clinically integrated network they are like a group of providers that get together and assume risk and if they are savings they share the savings you know if there's no savings and they share the downfall. but so providers get together and they say we want to create this group we're going to manage these patients we're going to reduce their cost and then we're gonna like share the savings so we do work with those organizations too they're riskbased organizations that the provider entered into a contract
with and we're sharing the data back with that organization on the
Speaker 63
21:58
behalf of the provider. thank you sorry thank
Senator John Payton
Unverified
22:05
you madam chair it's very fortuitous that this has come up I've had a little personal experience here in the last six weeks or two months
that I had never dreamed that I'd have somebody right on topic sitting in front of me in committee but so before the databases and the computers we'd go to the doctor or or provider and they'd have us fill out a questionnaire on paper you know and obviously they need to know all of those answers in order to treat you safely and effectively from what you described in your opening the database is supposed to
make that available to providers for the same purpose so why are we required to fill out the stupid form every time and and and I know it's funny but it's very aggravating so here's the thing I had to have surgery on my hand and so I fill out all the questionnaire and everything forbaptist health and they do the the nerve induction test and then schedule the appointment
with a surgeon which was ortho Arkansas so I had to fill out another big questionnaire for ortho Arkansas. They did the surgery and I go back for the follow up to get the stitches out and they want to force me to fill out that questionnaire again and I refused and went to my personal provider and got stitches out but I mean it is ridiculous that you'd return within two or three weeks on a follow up for a procedure that's been done and I
can't fathom why they would force you to fill it out a second, a third or fourth time unless it's because they're getting paid 2 cents for every survey they turn into your group so are we incentivizing them to force this on the patients is there any medical reason to have somebody refill that out every two weeks or
Speaker 31
24:13
whatever when they're in a treatment series
Speaker 32
24:15
No I think sometimes the policy hasn't caught up with with the technology but you know orthoarkansas and Baptists are
both connected to sharer so they're able to access each other's medical records using us so they could I think sometimes there's just hospital workflows or clinic workflows that require somebody made this policy a while back that says you're going to come in you're going to answer these questions and then we're going to take you back to this room. we're going to take your blood pressure your weight not compensated by the number of surveys they turn in don't don't think so I used I used to work on medicaid and I know like for to do a depression
screening sometimes you could get compensated by health plans but that was like once a year or once
Senator John Payton
Unverified
25:00
every six months type of thing all
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
25:04
right thank you thank you madam chair thank you are there any other questions
from members of the committee? right sorrypresentative Long yes you're recognized thank you
Representative Wayne Long
Unverified
25:15
madam chairman it's a little bit off the topic but y'all look like the right people to ask this question right after the governor
took office and she did a executive order requiring the health department to explain or at least give the data to to people that are considering taking COVId shots about the adverse reactions and I I checked with a couple of health department units and they didn't know what I was talking about so I'm I'm wondering if that never got implemented or if they just maybe weren't not trained to to distribute that information
ra pp ed them long to my knowledge we're in compliance with all the executive orders I would have to look specifically into this situation and if we have a local health unit or two that are out there that aren't doing what they're supposed to do we'd really like to look into it Mr Gilmore may know a little bit more about
Matt Gilmore
Unverified
26:22
this thank you Matt Gilmore department of healthalth representative Long this is the there was legislation that I'm familiar with it I think the the wording of the legislation spoke to posting it on our website but we can we can
make sure that our health units have all that information specifically and we can and we and I'll have to get with you about this particular but we do the I think the language of the law required it to be on our website and so that's what we're trying to make sure we're in compliance with but we're
Representative Wayne Long
Unverified
26:48
happy to visit about any specific because you know most people don't go on websites before they they visit and even if they do the health department's websites sort of hard to navigate so it's it's big agree but you know if if they you know if it's just a handout just so people know that like you know there's there's some people that have had
adverse reactions to these shots and they might want to you know be able to make an informed consent whether or not they want to do it so appreciate and I may if if you
Matt Gilmore
Unverified
27:11
don't mind I do think we we are there are some fact sheets we're required to give them I think and also there's an insert and that sort of thing that we're required to make sure they're aware of that sort of thing and don't anyway but yeah but we'll we'll double check I'll get with you after this is over and and make sure we're on the same page as far as what health units this was thank you very much appreciate it thank you ma'am
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
27:35
right and seeing any other further questions? all right thank you so much for your testimony let's see is there any other business to come before the committee? all right seeing none . I'll turn
Speaker 73
27:44
it back over to you seeing none we stand adjourn
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Consideration to Approve the July 28, 2025, Meeting Minutes [Exhibit B]
C. Discussion of Arkansas State Health Alliance for Records Exchange (SHARE) [Exhibits C1-C4]
D. Other Business
E. Adjournment
Documents
| Title | Type | Pages | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agenda — PUBLIC HEALTH WELFARE AND LABOR COMMITTEE - SENATE AND HOUSE, Aug 6, 2025 | Agenda | 1 | Official source ↗ |
| Exhibit B- Draft Minutes 07-28-2025 | Exhibit | 1 | Official source ↗ |
| Exhibit C1- SHARE Fact Flyer | Exhibit | 1 | Official source ↗ |
| Exhibit C2- SHARE Summer Newsletter 2025 | Exhibit | 4 | Official source ↗ |
| Exhibit C3- Tired of waiting Handout | Exhibit | 1 | Official source ↗ |
| Exhibit C4- 24 Hour Report Flyer | Exhibit | 1 | Official source ↗ |
Speakers
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
Speaker 29
Speaker 30
Speaker 31
Speaker 32
Representative Jeremy Wooldridge
Unverified
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
Speaker 63
Senator John Payton
Unverified
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
Representative Wayne Long
Unverified
Matt Gilmore
Unverified
Speaker 73