N.C. Org Taking Paper out of Disability Evaluation Process

The North Carolina Healthcare Information and Communications Alliance, Inc. (NCHICA) has been awarded a Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN) Trial Implementation contract to electronically enable the process of obtaining and using medical data to determine disability.
Through this project — entitled the Social Security Administration (SSA) Authorized Release of Information to a Trusted Entity Use Case — NCHICA aims to expedite the flow of benefits, which it says can help alleviate the economic burden to beneficiaries and their families and increase the efficiency of both the SSA and provider organizations by replacing paper systems that are currently in use.
The NHIN Trial Implementations are designed to test the connectivity of disparate health information exchanges and to create the policies, procedures, business cases and collaboratives necessary to support these exchanges, according to the org.

Based in Research Triangle Park, N.C., NCHICA is a nonprofit consortium that aims to improve healthcare by accelerating the adoption of information technology. It is one of nine organizations that was awarded a contract last year to participate in the second phase of NHIN project.