HIE Rundown – 8-31-21

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Posted By: Roberta Mullin August 31, 2021

Health Information Exchange (HIE) is happening every minute of every day. Your personal health information is moving and being viewed to improve the quality of your healthcare and lower the costs. The job will not be complete until all health records are digital and interoperable. Here’s what’s happening to make that reality.

Listen

From The Tate Chronicles, host Jim Tate talks to DrFirst’s president, Cam Deemer who has over 20 years of healthcare industry experience. Cam plays an instrumental role in formalizing and driving improved business processes, while developing new technology strategies to leverage the benefits of e-prescribing and other DrFirst platform services for providers, hospitals, payers, and other healthcare stakeholders. He is also a strong proponent of promoting interoperability in the healthcare industry by sharing clinical data between systems.

News and Noted

The NRHI and SHIEC Announce Affiliation; New Organization to be named Civitas Networks for Health
The Network for Regional Healthcare Improvement (@RegHealthImp) and the Strategic Health Information Exchange Collaborative (@SHIEClive) announced a formal affiliation between the two organizations to form a new organization named Civitas Networks for Health (@civitas4health). The new organization will serve as a platform for local nonprofit health collaboratives and health information exchanges to grow and thrive. It will offer engagement opportunities and support action at the local, state, and national levels to achieve policy goals for healthcare quality, cost, and equity through data-driven, collaborative, and transformative strategies. The affiliation comes after a one-year due diligence process that will culminate on October 1, 2021 with the organizational launch of Civitas Networks for Health.

Healthy Amplified Inks Commercial Deal with ScriptSender to Drive Cognition Screening
ScriptSender (@ScriptSender), a company that enables secure, one-click communication between healthcare providers, announced that it is collaborating with Healthy Amplified (@healthyamp) to support interoperability for the company’s cognitive health solution. Healthy Amplified, based in Chicago, provides a mobile-based, proprietary cognition technology that enables hospitals, clinics, and providers to screen cognitive function in patients. Using an adaptive touchscreen test, the CANTAB technology precisely measures cognitive function across five distinct cognitive domains and assesses depression and mood.

DirectTrust Reports Upsurge in Direct Exchange Transactions During the Second Quarter
DirectTrust (@DirectTrustorg) reported a significant uptick in Direct exchange transactions, and the launch of its Interoperability Hero Initiative. DirectTrust is a non-profit healthcare industry alliance created to support secure, identity-verified electronic exchanges of protected health information (PHI) between provider organizations, and between providers and patients, for the purpose of improved coordination of care.

Idaho Health Data Exchange (IHDE) Partners with Orion Health to Migrate to a Next Generation Platform
Idaho Health Data Exchange (IHDE) (@idahohde), Idaho’s statewide designated health information exchange (HIE), is partnering with Orion Health (@OrionHealth), a leading global provider of population health management solutions, to migrate IHDE to Orion Health’s state-of-the-art, next generation HIE platform.

Diameter Health Selected as Amazon HealthLake Connector Partner
Diameter Health (@DiameterHealth), a fast-growing company in health data interoperability and optimization, announced that it has been selected by Amazon Web Services, Inc. as a Connector Partner for Amazon HealthLake, a HIPAA-eligible service that enables healthcare organizations to store, transform, query, and analyze health data at scale. As a Connector Partner, Diameter Health will provide AWS customers with a pre-built connector that normalizes and optimizes clinical data and transforms it in real-time into the standard Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) format.

Ciitizen in Palo Alto Selects Healthcare Information Technology Industry Expert as Vice President of Health Information Exchange (HIE) Strategy
Ciitizen (@ciitizen), a healthcare technology company helping patients get full control of their medical records to access more personalized treatment options, including rapid participation in clinical trials, announced the addition of Glenn Keet as the company’s VP of HIE strategy. Keet will bring both his experience with HIEs and his relationships with industry executives to accelerate Ciitizen’s goal of increasing data access to improve patient care and advance healthcare research.

CMS Interoperability and Patient Access Final Rule Compliance

Smile CDR Finalizes 20 US Payers’ Compliance With CMS Interoperability and Patient Access Final Rule
Smile CDR (@smilecdr), a health data storage and integration company, announced the successful implementation of its clinical data repository platform across 20 U.S. payer databases. The platform updates allowed customers to effectively meet the CMS Interoperability and Patient Access Final Rule (CMS-9115-F) compliance enforcement deadline of July 1, 2021. The new CMS rule addresses barriers to the secure exchange of health information that limit the ability of patients to access essential health information.

To Read

Commonwell

The Heat is On: US Caught FHIR in 2019 – By Steven Posnack and Wes Barker, ONC’s Health IT Buzz (@ONC_HealthIT) – In 2018, the United States was at a turning point with respect to the adoption and implementation of the Health Level Seven (HL7®) Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR®) standard in health information technology (health IT). At that time, our analysis, outlined in a previous blog post predicted that the U.S. could soon see widespread adoption of certified application programming interface (API) technology enabled with FHIR. The results are in, and the findings are encouraging.

Events

ONC
When: Tuesday, September 14, 2021  1:00 pm ET
Register for this event.
Note: If you’re unable to join the live presentation, you can still register to receive a link to access a recording of the webcast.

What Healthcare Providers Need to Know About Information Sharing & the Information Blocking Regulation – Join them for the first in a series of clinician-focused webinars on the information blocking regulation. Experts will explain how ONC supports secure, appropriate sharing of electronic health information and how information sharing leads to more affordable and equitable care and improved care quality.

HL7

SHIEC

PATIENT ID NOW

Patient ID Now is a coalition of healthcare organizations representing a wide range of healthcare stakeholders committed to advancing through legislation and regulations a nationwide strategy to address patient identification. Read more about the coalition.

  • Patient Matching: An Essential Tool in the Era of COVID-19
    Free Recording

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of ensuring patients are accurately matched to their medical records, yet the problem of patient misidentification persists, endangering patient safety, and the public health response. Listen to the newly formed Patient ID Now Coalition during a virtual hill briefing with health leaders on July 7. They dive into the implications of patient matching and identification during the pandemic.

Patient ID Now Coalition Pleased Congress is Addressing Patient Misidentification
Patient ID Now, a coalition of leading healthcare organizations, including the American College of Surgeons, the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA), the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME), Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), Intermountain Healthcare and Premier Healthcare Alliance, is pleased that the U.S. House of Representatives voted to remove the longstanding ban in its Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies appropriations bill that stifles innovation around patient identification.

The Strategic Health Information Exchange Collaborative

SHIEC (@SHIEClive) is the National Trade Association for Health Information Exchange Organizations. It is routine for important data about patients’ ongoing care to reside in multiple unconnected organizations. SHIEC member HIEs use information technology and trusted relationships in their service areas to enable secure, authorized exchange of patient information among disparate providers. By providing enhanced access to all available and relevant patient data SHIEC HIE members aim to improve the quality, coordination, and cost-effectiveness of health care provided in their communities. Read their news feed.

The Sequoia Project

The Sequoia Project (@SequoiaProject) was chartered to advance the implementation of secure, interoperable nationwide health information exchange. The ONC transitioned management of its eHealth Exchange to The Sequoia Project for maintenance. Since 2012, the Exchange has grown to become the largest health information exchange network in the country.

The CommonWell

CommonWell Health Alliance (@CommonWell) is devoted to the simple vision that health data should be available to individuals and providers regardless of where care occurs. Additionally, provider access to this data must be built-in health IT at a reasonable cost for use by a broad range of health care providers and the people they serve.

DirectTrust

A pioneer in offering technical trust and confidence in the secure exchange of health information, DirectTrust (@DirectTrustorg) is committed to collaboration for advancing secure communication. As a non-profit trade alliance, DirectTrust operates not only as a membership organization, but also as an ANSI-accredited standards body, a trust framework supported by policy, and an accreditor for reliable and trusted exchange across the DirectTrust network. Read their News and Events.

HL7

Founded in 1987, Health Level Seven International (HL7) (@HL7) is a not-for-profit, ANSI-accredited standards developing organization dedicated to providing a comprehensive framework and related standards for the exchange, integration, sharing, and retrieval of electronic health information that supports clinical practice and the management, delivery and evaluation of health services. HL7 is supported by more than 1,600 members from over 50 countries, including 500+ corporate members representing healthcare providers, government stakeholders, payers, pharmaceutical companies, vendors/suppliers, and consulting firms. Read their newsfeed.

Interoperability Institute

The Interoperability Institute (IOI) (@TheInteropInst) is designed to provide the products, services, leadership, and workforce to bring advanced interoperability solutions to the Health IT market. For stakeholders invested in health and social outcomes, this means less fragmented, more resource efficient ecosystems that seamlessly share electronic information for public benefit. For consumers, this means greater continuity of care across providers, health systems, and geographies among a myriad of other benefits that stretch beyond healthcare. Read their newsfeed.

Resources

Case Study: NEHII Rises to the Challenge of COVID-19 with Cloud-Based Analytics and Robust Patient Matching Tools
The Nebraska Health Information Initiative (NEHII) is a leading non-profit health information exchange (HIE) serving more than 4 million residents across 300 participating health care providers, payers and the State of Nebraska. NEHII partnered with NextGate to accurately match and connect critical public health information across the state of Nebraska to support trusted data exchange and case reporting for COVID-19 using an Enterprise Master Patient Index on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Download this eBook by NextGate (@NextGate) to read the case study.

Consensus: The Chase for Interoperability
In its continued campaign to bring about data interoperability across the healthcare industry by 2024, the HHS’s Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) jointly released a set of new rules in 2019 to further promote the seamless exchange of protected health information (PHI). Despite increasing attempts to facilitate interoperability through regulations, the challenges lie elsewhere in creating seamless data exchange among a patient’s physician, hospital, labs, pharmacy, and others along the continuum of care.

Download this paper by eFax Corporate (@eFaxCorporate) to learn more about the fastest, most cost-effective way for your organization to access and share patient data through one interoperable platform.

eHealth Initiative Resource Center
Interoperability Files – Check out the new white paper resource in the eHealth Initiative’s (@eHealthDC) Resource Center: Case Study: Remote Patient Monitoring

ONC Interoperability Pledge
Companies that provide 90 percent of electronic health records used by hospitals nationwide as well as the top five largest health care systems in the country have agreed to implement three core commitments: Consumer Access, No Blocking/Ensuring Transparency, and Standards. The ONC (@ONC_HealthIT) wants vendors to sign a pledge. Is your vendor pledging? Find out who is on the list.