Free Essay About North Carolina Health Information Exchange

Abstract

The Health Information Exchange (HIE) provides doctors, nurses, pharmacist, health care providers and patients with a secure to patient’s medical information electronically. The HIE, therefore, helps in saving time and improving quality and safety of the information. It also helps in cutting down the cost of the running the healthcare facilities (health hit. 2014).
The body, North Carolina Health Information Exchange - NC HIE works with the Community Care of North Carolina to provide to all providers and physicians’ a better access to health care data electronically and to share of the medical record. The health information technology for economic and clinical health (HITECH) Act and ARRA (American Recovery and Restoration Act) of 2009 laid the foundation for NC HIE operations.
In 2010, the Governor (Carolina) made the NC HIE the statewide health information exchanges following the development of a statewide HIE plan by a broad pool of North Carolina healthcare stakeholders. Its aim was to govern the finance, the legal, and the technical principles of the NC HIE’s organizational framework. The NC HIE has improved since 2010. It now works with the Community Care of North Carolina, Inc. (CCNC), NC DHHS and other vendors within the state, and nationwide (Community Care of North Carolina, 2015).
NC HIE in the North Carolina state health information exchange offers a secure electronic system in order for the providers to share patient information. The system enables the providers to access the medical record, analyze the patient’s health information and the exchange. The system also saves time and reduces the use of paperwork, leading to an improvement in the health care coordination and consequently enables the providers to offer better care for the patients.
The foundation of NC took place in 2010 with a focus on four groups; governance, legal and political, finance, clinical and technical operations, governance that still govern the activities of the NC HIE today. The NC HIE will be part of the nationwide E-health exchange. The E-health exchange participants have to follow a common set of standards, specifications, policies and also “trust” agreement, as well as the Data and Reciprocal Support Agreement (DURSA) to access data only for permitted purposes under HIPAA. The E-health exchange is a nationwide health information exchange that works with federal agencies and also non-federal organizations. It supports the sharing of C-32 documents (Continuity of care documents or “CCDs”) for the treatments, care and coordination and transition of care. Some components that are not supported at the moment by the E-health exchange are: provider (hospital/physician/staff) directory, patient cross-reference manager), patient ID Insurance (MPI/EMPI/Assigning authority). Others are the central record locator services, document registry / repository, communications hub or bus infrastructure, and clinical data repository (CDR) (North Carolina Health Information Exchange. about NC HIE, 2015).
The core of the HIE services includes the following. HIE Connectivity Fabric offer essential elements that give the diverse health care via a standard patient and provider context. These essential features allow a secure connection to the patient’s records and information between many enterprises. Further, it allows the data normalization from different sources as well as the enforcement of the privacy policies and the consumer consent declaration. Therefore, HIE connectivity Fabric will permit the health care organizations to exchange information through a standard messaging architecture with all participating systems. The technologies and specifications supported included: CCD, HL7 and web services.
Finally, the NC HIE knows and understands the many ways of health information exchange, and that have to follow the NC HIE Privacy and Security Policies. To follow the technology and capabilities of all the participants, NC HIE allows for a multiple integration of different profiles on the continuum from the Federated profiles to a tightly integrated profile (North Carolina Health Information Exchange. Core HIE services, 2015).

References

Community Care of North Carolina (CCNC). (2015). North Carolina Health Information Exchange. Retrieved from:
Health Information Exhcnage.(2014). What is HIE? Retrieved from:
http://www.healthit.gov/providers-professionals/health-information- exchange/what-hie
http://www.nchie.org/service-offerings/core-hie-services/
https://www.communitycarenc.org/informatics-center/nc-hie/
North Carolina Health Information Exchange. (NC HIE).(2015). About NC HIE, Core HIE Services. Retrieved from: