Laura Young

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The BH Interop Insider

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Join date: Jun 18, 2025

About

Laura is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of Converge Health, a consulting firm dedicated to advancing the last mile of interoperability in healthcare. With deep expertise in Health Information Exchange (HIE), behavioral health data sharing, and consent management, Laura helps organizations navigate the complex intersections of policy, technology, and implementation. Converge Health provides both strategic consulting and fractional services to HIEs, public agencies, and health tech firms.

Laura brings more than 25 years of IT experience—including nearly two decades of leadership in healthcare IT. She has led major initiatives to integrate behavioral health and social care data into statewide and regional exchange frameworks, improving care coordination and enabling whole-person care. Her previous roles include Executive Director of San Diego Health Connect, as well as Executive Director positions with Alaska’s statewide HIE and a behavioral health HIE in Arizona.

Nationally recognized as a subject matter expert in interoperability and 42 CFR Part 2, Laura is known for her strategic insight and hands-on execution. She currently serves as Vice Chair of the HIMSS Interoperability & Health Information Exchange Community and has held board positions with the Arizona and Alaska HIMSS chapters

Overview

First Name

Laura

Last Name

Young

Posts (42)

Jul 3, 2026 ∙ 5 min

When Caregivers Need Care: What I Learned Working for a Physician Health Program 30 years ago

My first real job, over three decades ago now, was working for the Colorado Physician Health Program. I was twenty years old, and I spent my days around physicians who had been referred because of drug or alcohol use, mental health crises, or other conditions that put their license and their patients at risk. Some were referred by their hospital. Some by a colleague who cared enough to make the hard call. Some by the medical board after something went wrong. And some walked in on their own,...

May 20, 2026 ∙ 8 min

What Works (and What Doesn't) When States Try to Connect Behavioral Health to Their HIE

There is a persistent fantasy in health IT circles that connecting behavioral health providers to a state HIE is fundamentally the same problem as connecting any other provider. Just get them on the platform, map the data, and the interoperability fairy handles the rest. If only! The reality, as anyone who has spent serious time working with behavioral health systems knows, is that HIE connectivity in this sector requires a completely different playbook. Different funding logic. Different...

Apr 21, 2026 ∙ 9 min

The Data Is In, and It's Not Pretty: What ONC's 2024 Report Tells Us About Behavioral Health's Digital Divide

Every few years, the federal government takes a hard look at whether substance use and mental health treatment facilities have caught up to the rest of healthcare when it comes to electronic health records and data exchange. The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology recently released findings from the 2024 survey cycle , drawing on SAMHSA's National Substance Use and Mental Health Services Survey (N-SUMHSS) , and the answer is: they haven't. Not by a long shot....