Three of the largest health systems in North Carolina, Duke Health, Novant Health and Carolinas HealthCare System, have signed agreements to connect to NC HealthConnex, North Carolina’s state-designated health information exchange (HIE).
What’s more, Wilmington-based Coastal Connect, a regional HIE in southeastern North Carolina, also has agreed to connect to NC HealthConnex, which will add five hospitals and more than 100 data contributors, acute and ambulatory, to the growing statewide HIE.
Duke Health, based in Durham, operates three hospitals. Novant Health, based in Winston-Salem, operates 14 medical centers and hundreds of outpatient facilities and physician clinics and serves patients in Virginia, North and South Carolina and Georgia. Charlotte-based Carolinas Healthcare System serves patients in North and South Carolina and operates eight hospitals.
The three large health systems and Coastal Connect join foundational participant, UNC Health Care, and 26 hospitals that are participating in the statewide HIE. According to a NC HealthConnex press release, in addition to hospital and health system integrations, the HIE also is in the process of connecting with hundreds of physician practices, health departments, federally qualified health centers, rural health clinics and other ambulatory facilities that use cloud-based and on-premise electronic health/medical record (EHR/EMR) solutions.
“In the past year, the total number of unique patients in NC HealthConnex grew by almost 30 percent totaling cost to 3.7 million,” organization officials said in the press release.
Created by the North Carolina General Assembly, NC HealthConnex is the state-operate health information exchange and is managed by the North Carolina Health Information Exchange Authority (NC HIEA) housed within the N.C. Department of Information Technology.
