The eHealth Exchange, one of the nation’s largest health information networks, has announced its newest network participant, HIE Networks, a healthcare technology and communications company providing health information exchange (HIE) services. Notably, eHealth Exchange officials say, HIE Networks is its first vendor participant.
The exchange network traditionally connects hospitals, medical groups, pharmacies, dialysis centers, and other sites of care with each other and with federal government agencies. As a vendor participant, HIE Networks has signed the same health information sharing agreement, known as the Data Use and Reciprocal Support Agreement (DURSA), as all eHealth Exchange network participants. Now, HIE Networks may flow-down these terms to their customers who choose to opt-in to the eHealth Exchange network, potentially lowering the legal review costs for their customers looking to share information with others nationwide, officials noted.
The eHealth Exchange network, which is working in 75 percent of all US hospitals, is leveraged by more than 30 electronic health record (EHR) technologies and 61 regional or state health information exchanges (HIEs). Four federal agencies (Department of Defense, Department of Veteran Affairs, and Social Security Administration) participate in the network to share patient information with private sector partners as well as other agencies. In all, the eHealth Exchange supports secure exchange of the records of more than 120 million patients, according to officials.
According to its website, the Florida-based HIE Networks’ roots began when a vascular surgeon and a technology entrepreneur started a regional health information organization in Tallahassee, Fla., in 2005. Since that time, the company has evolved and developed a set of communication tools to share records of disparate EHRs, improve workflow and increase efficiencies that meet privacy standards, it officials stated. They specifically specialize in referral management and care coordination solutions, as well as an electronic/digital replacement for faxing.
“Since its inception, the eHealth Exchange network has worked closely with vendors like Cerner and Epic to ensure their customers benefit from health information exchange,” Jay Nakashima, executive director of eHealth Exchange, said in a statement. “We thank HIE Networks for pioneering this new connection type, in which the vendor becomes a participant in the network themselves, bringing expanded connectivity to their customers and members.”
In addition to being an active participant in the network, HIE Networks is also now an eHealth Exchange Validated Product, joining more than a dozen other leading healthcare technology vendors in completing testing to ensure interoperability for customers using their technology to connect to the eHealth Exchange. Customers of these vendors benefit from reduced testing fees and faster onboarding times to begin sharing health data with other participants of the eHealth Exchange, officials contend.
“HIE Networks was eager to be the first healthcare technology vendor to directly connect to the eHealth Exchange,” said Zach Finn, CEO of HIE Networks. “Our unique philosophy allows HIE Networks to provide both the technical connection as a vendor and, the often more challenging to complete, the HIPAA HITECH privacy and security legal paperwork required to share patient records for our customers. We will begin rolling out this nationwide interoperability to our HIE Networks participants regionally, statewide and nationally to enable secure patient record access during natural disasters, such as hurricanes and pandemics, and to serve the transient snow bird population, who frequently have their medical history spread throughout healthcare providers across the country.”
