Thirty-three states and 1 territory formed the HISPC, which aims to address the privacy and security challenges presented by electronic health information exchange through multi-state collaboration. With the support of its state or territorial governor, each team engaged a steering committee and a range of local stakeholders to 1) assess variations in organization-level business policies and state laws that affect health information exchange; 2) identify and propose practical solutions, while preserving the privacy and security requirements in applicable Federal and State laws and 3) develop detailed plans to implement solutions.

This initiative is designed to evaluate and improve the quality of screening and diagnostic colonoscopies in ambulatory care settings by presenting to clinicians a quality report card, the Excellence Report, measuring their reporting of and adherence to nationally- accepted quality measures for colonoscopy.

To address the large discrepancy between consensus quality standards and healthcare services actually delivered to those eligible, the Institute of Medicine has called for new quality initiatives and has identified asthma as one if its priority areas. Each year, thousands of preventable deaths are attributed to asthma.