Bridging Public and Private: How Shared Data Infrastructure Is Closing the Gap in Care Transitions

Health care does not fail patients at a single point. It fails them at the handoffs, the moments between an acute stay and what comes next, when responsibility shifts and information does not follow. Most health information exchange has solved the acute side of that problem. The harder half is post-acute. When a patient moves to a skilled nursing facility, home health, or another setting after discharge, the data trail usually thins out, and that is exactly where high-risk patients slip through. Closing the gap means bringing acute and post-acute data into one view, which takes the kind of collaboration across public agencies, nonprofit health information exchanges, and private data networks that the industry has historically struggled to build.

Texas offers a working example. The Texas Health Services Authority operates as a public-private bridge, connecting government priorities, nonprofit HIE infrastructure, and private data capabilities to support care transitions statewide. Its encounter notification network shares admission, discharge, and transfer data from acute and post-acute facilities, giving care teams real-time visibility into where patients are moving across the continuum.

This session examines what it takes to build and sustain that kind of cross-sector collaboration. We will walk through how joining acute and post-acute data changes what care managers can see and do, why a public-private structure matters for trust and adoption among subscribers, and what happens to care transition outcomes when data stops living in silos. A growing body of evidence on health information exchange indicates that community HIEs operating across organizational boundaries deliver benefits that single-network enterprise systems cannot match.

The session closes with what this means for patients and for the organizations connecting them. When acute and post-acute data move with the patient, care managers reach high-risk patients faster, transitions happen with more complete information, and the gaps where patients fall through finally become visible. The goal is not better data infrastructure for its own sake. It is fewer preventable readmissions, better follow-up after discharge, and care teams that are not working blind at the moments that matter most. Attendees will leave with a clear picture of the patient impact that becomes possible when public and private interests align around shared data, a framework for making the same case in their own communities, and language for justifying their exchange's value to boards, funders, and participating members.