(Rpld. 7/1/26)

A. The department shall administer a three-year competitive grant program that provides an interoperability software technology solution to support rural hospitals, health care providers and urban trauma centers to further treatment care coordination with a focus on reducing public and private health care costs and unnecessary transportation costs.  The department shall award the first grant under this program not later than December 31, 2022.

B. The Arizona health care cost containment system shall work with the department to supplement the grant monies by identifying and applying to receive federal matching monies.

C. The grant program shall enable the implementation of an interoperability software technology solution that is shared by hospitals and health care providers to benefit patients before and after a patient is discharged from the provider’s care.

D. The software shall be made available to rural hospitals, health care providers and urban trauma centers that wish to participate by enabling a hospital’s electronic medical records system to interface with other electronic medical records systems and providers to promote connectivity between hospital systems and facilitate increased communication between hospital staff and providers that use different or distinctive online platforms and information systems when treating patients. The department shall award grants for an interoperability software technology solution that, at a minimum:

1. Complies with the health insurance portability and accountability act privacy standards (Title 45 of the Code of Federal Regulations, Part 160 and part 164, subpart E).

2. Captures and forwards clinical data, including laboratory results and images, and provides synchronous patient clinical data to health care providers regardless of geographic location.

3. Provides a synchronous data exchange that is not batched or delayed, at the point the clinical data is captured and available in the hospital’s electronic record system.

4. Is capable of providing proactive alerts to health care providers.

5. Allows both synchronous and asynchronous communication.

6. Has patient-centric communication and is tracked with date and time stamping.

7. Is connected to the appropriate physician resources.

8. Provides data to update cost reports to enhance emergency triage and to treat and transport patients.

E. Each grant recipient shall demonstrate proof of veteran employment.

F. For each year of the grant program, each grant recipient shall provide to the department of administration a report that provides metrics and quantifies cost and time savings for using an interoperable software solution in health care that complies with the health insurance portability and accountability act privacy standards (Title 45 of the Code of Federal Regulations, Part 160 and part 164, subpart E). On or before July 1 of each fiscal year of the grant program, the department of administration in coordination with the Arizona health care cost containment system shall provide to the president of the senate, the speaker of the house of representatives, the chairpersons of the health and human services committees of the senate and the house of representatives and the directors of the joint legislative budget committee and the governor’s office of strategic planning and budgeting a report on the allocation of grant funding and a compiled analysis of the reports provided by the grant recipients.

G. For the purposes of this section:

1. "Rural" mean a county with a population of less than nine hundred thousand persons.

2. "Veteran employment" means a business organization that employs an individual or has a company officer who served and who was honorably discharged from or released under honorable conditions from service in the armed forces.