ONC to stand up NwHIN Exchange in October
WASHINGTON – No longer a pilot in any regard but name, the Nationwide Health Information Exchange is ready to enter a new phase as a non-federal, nonprofit entity enabling public-private interoperability and data exchange.
ONC to stand up NwHIN Exchange in October
WASHINGTON – No longer a pilot in any regard but name, the Nationwide Health Information Exchange is ready to enter a new phase as a non-federal, nonprofit entity enabling public-private interoperability and data exchange.
Marking an HIE milestone, ONC said that come October it will transform the Nationwide Health Information Network-Exchange into an entity all its own.
What started as a conceptual network of networks was then refined by ONC into the array of “standards, services, and policies that enable information to be securely exchanged over the Internet.” Later it was launched into pilot testing. Today, it is ready for primetime.
“What we realized is that six months ago, 500 hospitals were already connected, 30,000 clinical users, 3,000 providers, and a patient population coverage area of 65 million people, and 1 million shared records. It became pretty clear this wasn’t a pilot anymore,” says Mariann Yeager interim executive director, NwHIN-Exchange. “And so we will have that pretty much launched and transitioned to stand on its own beginning in October of this year.”
When that day comes the NwHIN Exchange will encompass at least four federal agencies – CMS, DoD, SSA, and VA – as well as 21 non-federal entities that can all share patient records for episodes of care.
In addition to the federal agencies, the roster of participants includes such healthcare heavyweights as Kaiser Permanente, Marshfield Clinic, MedVirginia, North Carolina Healthcare Information and Communication Alliance, Regenstrief Institute, and the University of San Diego Beacon Community, to name just half-a-dozen.
Growth continues
And it’s growing. At least two more agencies are currently “coming through the process and will be testing,” Yeager says, as are private healthcare organizations.
“We’re really at a game-changing point in time as the Exchange moves into a public-private model with potentially significant expansion,” adds Lauren Thompson, director of ONC’s Federal Health Architecture (FHA). Specifically, under that new model the Exchange Coordinating Committee, the group driving this effort, voted on March 1 to approve a plan that maps the strategy, sustainability model, and operational transition of NwHIN-Exchange to a non-profit organization.
“This is not a federal exchange,” says Tim Cromwell, director of standards and interoperability at the VA. Rather, NwHIN-Exchange “will enable the sharing of health information among private organizations as well as between private organizations and governmental agencies,” Yeager adds. “Once the legal entity is established, we will begin to transition operational functions from ONC to the new organization, which will then support the Exchange ongoing.”
ONC’s Exchange Coordinating Committee is still working to determine where the physical headquarters for NwHIN-Exchange will reside, but Yeager expects it to be in the Washington, D.C. area.
Sharing that works
Today, participating organizations share information using a common set of specifications, some specific to NwHIN, while others are industry standards, and they do so under the Data Use and Reciprocal Support Agreement, affectionately known as the DURSA. “Everybody agrees to do the exact same thing – you can imagine that took some time to achieve, but the awesome thing is that it worked,” Yeager says. “I mean, it really does work.”
Cheryl Stephens, president and CEO of the Community Health Information Collaborative (CHIC), in Duluth, Minnesota considers the three most significant aspects of participation to be contracts with federal partners such as the VA and Social Security Administration that truly affect the exchange of patient data, having an HIE based upon federal standards, “so nobody can say ‘We don’t want to connect with you because you’re weird,’” both of which contribute to CHIC having become the HIE folks can turn to because they know it’s keeping abreast with federal standards and guidelines.
“We’re very proud of the accomplishments so far but we also recognize that there’s a long way to go,” MedVirginia CEO Michael Matthews says. “We have to stay at this until we really have ubiquitous HIE as the standard, not the exception.”
Adding partners will serve as final brushstrokes that continue bringing the picture into a clearer focus, which several participants believe will only increase interest in NwHIN-Exchange.
“The tipping point happens when you get state-to-state information exchanges. A person in Idaho comes to Salt Lake City for care and the Salt Lake City private hospital is able to query and retrieve patient information from the Boise, Idaho private hospital,” VA’s Cromwell says. “Once that value case is seen, I think you reach the tipping point and we’ll get a lot of buy-in.”
