Nationwide network known for connecting federal government and private sector providers now includes vendors
VIENNA, VA and TALLAHASSEE, FL – October 14, 2020 – eHealth Exchange, one of the nation’s largest health information networks, announced today its newest network participant, HIE Networks, a healthcare technology and communications company providing health information exchange (HIE) services. The new connection marks the first vendor participant for the network, which traditionally connects hospitals, medical groups, pharmacies, dialysis centers, and other sites of care with each other and federal government agencies.
“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,” said Jay Nakashima, executive director of eHealth Exchange. “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.”
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.
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 rigorous 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 time to begin sharing health data with other participants of the eHealth Exchange.
“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.”
About the eHealth Exchange
The eHealth Exchange, a 501(c)3 non-profit, is among the oldest and largest health information networks in America and is most well-known as the principle way the federal government shares data between agencies and with the private sector. 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. www.ehealthexchange.org / @ehealthexchange