Washington State’s HIE “OneHealthPort” works with participating organizations representing a community of trading partners making preparations to exchange transactions. As organizations join the HIE, they are added to the list so that the trading partners and others interested in joining the HIE know who is participating and what transactions are being prepared to exchange.
Although the HIE supports the secure exchange of many common electronic health information transactions, there are many other uses for the HIE that trading partners are beginning to explore. For example, several clinics are looking to the HIE as a method to facilitate referrals in their community through the use of a community referral form and the CCD.
Other organizations are considering the OneHealthPort HIE as a ready infrastructure that can be used to support sharing information and reports for ACOs. The HIE also encourages trading partners to reach out to members in their medical community to begin to share ideas about transactions or ways to use the HIE to open other possibilities.
The HIE helps to find trading partners by providing an Entity Level Provider Directory. As the trading partner community grows, the HIE is also going to host a Practitioner Level Provider Directory in 2012.
Also in 2012, the HIE will host a Washington State Entity Level Provider Directory. This entity level directory will list any organization wishing to post on the HIE or HIO to describe their interest in participating and to describe what transactions they are ready to send and receive. This directory will include routing addresses and technical contact information for each entity.
Currently, OneHealthPort, the Washington State health Care Authority’s (Medicaid) EHR Incentive Program, and the Washington & Idaho Regional Extension Center (WIREC) are working together to finalize a proposed service for eligible professionals and hospitals to test and provide validation reporting for meaningful use requirements through the HIE.
The HIE has plans to expand beyond the state and is working with the state HIE’s of Alaska and Idaho, and with the Beacon Community of the Inland Northwest (BCIN) to prepare a policy and technical connectivity agreement for HIE-to-HIE exchange. Policy documents and technical connectivity processes resulting from the work with Alaska, Idaho, and the Beacon Community will be shared. There will be several opportunities to roll out an HIE-to-HIE connection using the agreed upon technical approach.
OneHealthPort is also working with a larger group of Western states and working with the Office of the National Coordinator to address HIE-to-HIE connections where NwHIN Direct tools are being used.
The National Renal Administrators Association (NRAA) is participating in a pilot to go through the end of March which is sponsored by CMS through the NwHIN to access the quality of patient care. The pilot will submit quality data reports containing clinical data for end stage renal dialysis patients to CMS from fourteen renal dialysis facilities across the country.
The NRAA contracted with the HIE in 2011 to obtain NwHIN exchange participation approval and to provide the technical infrastructure for this pilot. The HIE will continue to work with the NRAA for the national production that is expected to go live in 2012.
For more information, go to http://onehealthport.com.
