At last week's California HIE Stakeholder Summit in Sacramento, two announcements were made involving organizations seeking to build trust mechanisms between health information exchanges.
First, the Western States Consortium, which established the first interstate trust community in late 2012 by successfully sharing electronic patient data between California and Oregon, has grown into a national organization called the National Association of Trusted Exchanges (NATE). Incorporated as a nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C., the group is offering as a national model the trust bundle it developed to create interstate exchange. Its membership list has grown to include Nevada, Alaska, Hawaii, Michigan and Ohio.
Second, a new statewide group of community and enterprise health information organization leaders have formed the California Association of Health Information Exchanges (CAHIE). Its vision is to create a California trust framework that is based on national standards and protocols for trusted exchange and to assist all providers in joining or forming an HIE node under HealtheWay’s eHealth Exchange (formerly NwHIN).
Other stated goals of CAHIE include:
- Develop a comprehensive California addendum to the Federal DURSA which its members will sign and adopt that will call out refinements and further clarifications of policy and procedure relative to conduct of HIE in California;
- Develop a California-based multi-party trust agreement which will allow all parties who have signed it to interoperate using the national standards for Direct and Exchange;
- Support development of additional exchange patterns and expansion of exchange to all aspects of healthcare beyond clinical medicine;
- Assure that all providers of health-related services have the opportunity to participate in exchange and interoperate with other providers of care for patients in common;
- Ensure health information exchange is secure and respects the privacy rights of individuals;
- Support the technological innovation needed to establish infrastructure for California to enable inter-HIO exchange.
