Related Items
  FREE Insurancenetworking.com Site Registration!
Sign up today and access the leading source of Insurance I.T. information on the Web.

Your FREE site registration entitles you to

FREE Insurance Networking eNewsletters

Search more than 7 years worth of archived data

White Papers and Industry Research that provide valuable insights on a variety of technologies and implementation issues

Access our Web Seminar series

   

Slow on the Uptake

Pat Speer August 2007

The momentum to move to a nationwide e-health network that includes electronic medical records and secure transmission of information between stakeholders is being fueled by entities of all sizes and influence-from grass roots-oriented non-profits to major health insurers to the federal government. This momentum is putting mounting pressure on the faction that may stand the most to gain yet seems most reluctant to participate-the health care provider.

No one questions the fact that the e-health market is still in a state of relative infancy, in spite of the support being offered by the government, insurance, standards and vendor communities.

President George Bush has called for a system of universal health records by year 2015, yet the path to a universal health network is byzantine at best. At the larger network level, the federal government has been methodically plugging along, and in June asked for proposals to conduct trial implementations of the National Health Information Network (NHIN).

The NHIN has grass roots support from a variety of public-private e-health communities that want to make sure the momentum continues. In early June, a sustainable e-health data exchange model debuted, the capstone to four years of federally-supported work on a community electronic health information exchange (HIE) that is hoped by many to be the key to building the NHIN from the ground up. The effort is supported by the eHealth Initiative Foundation, a non-profit group comprised of affiliated organizations that want to drive improvements in the quality, safety and efficiency of health care through information and information technology.

In June, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology in the Department of Health and Human Services published a request for proposals for health data exchanges of various types. The exchanges will cooperate to ensure they can implement an interoperable "network of networks" over the Internet.

The RFP follows work in the past year on prototype NHIN architectures by a federally contracted consortia comprising CSC, Columbia, S.C., IBM, Armonk, N.Y., Bermuda-based Accenture and Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman.

REGIONAL SUPPORT

The success of the NHIN will largely depend on regional health information organizations (RHIO) in all communities. Three community HIEs (Indiana Health Information Exchange, HealthBridge in Cincinnati and Taconic Health Information Network, Fishkill, N.Y.) participated in the development of the model's tools, including a way to evaluate market readiness, a tool that estimates the value created by the HIE network, and a risk estimator for investors.

CareSpark, an RHIO in Tennessee, recently conducted an annual survey of RHIO and health information exchanges on behalf of the eHealth Initiative, which revealed that only 150 similar organizations were in various stages of development, Liesa Jenkins, CareSpark's Executive Director, told INN.

For more information on related topics, visit the following channels:


Data Management

Enterprise Technologies

Insurance Network

Spotlights