The North Carolina Health Information Exchange has upgraded its NC DIRECT functionality in order to enable participants to securely communicate with a larger number of healthcare providers state- and nationwide who are part of the national DirectTrust Transitional Trust Community Bundle. This national community of trusted users follow a common set of policies related to health information exchange using direct secure messaging including certificate management policies and HIPAA compliance processes.

 

The Orion Health Direct Secure Messaging upgrade will support NC HIE's mission of significantly improving healthcare coordination in North Carolina by enabling providers of all types statewide to securely and electronically communicate about a patient's health in order to provide comprehensive, improved care. 

 

"This was a necessary enhancement to enable our participants to communicate patient data with a much broader pool of providers," said Chris Scarboro, president of NC HIE. "The upgrade gives NC HIE participating organizations the ability to integrate NC HIE's NC Direct Secure Messaging service directly with their electronic medical records in order to improve workflows, care coordination and patient outcomes."

 

Communicating through NC DIRECT means the ability to securely and electronically exchange a patient's complete health record among all of a patient’s different providers ensuring that the treating provider has the most up-to-date and complete information at the point of care.

 

"NC HIE has integrated the new DSM product in five hospitals and we have several more in progress over the next few months," said Matt Bonanno, IT director of NC HIE. "The new functionality will enable hospital providers to send and receive messages without leaving their EMR, and in some cases, enable patient messaging to providers."

 

Transitional Trust Community members include major EMR vendors like Athena, NextGen and Medicity as well as several other statewide and regional health information exchanges. For a full list of DirectTrust members in the Transitional Trust Community with whom NC HIE participants can now communicate, visit the DirectTrust website: http://www.directtrust.org/accreditation-status.

 

About Orion Health Inc.

 

Founded in 1993 in Auckland, New Zealand, Orion Health is a global, privately-owned eHealth technology company. With an inherent ability to interconnect a wide variety of healthcare information systems, Orion Health is one of the world's leading providers of health information exchange and healthcare integration solutions. Today, Orion Health products and solutions are implemented in more than 30 countries, used by hundreds of thousands of clinicians, and help facilitate care for tens of millions of patients. Clinicians, provider facilities and OEM partners rely on Orion Health to facilitate data exchange between hospitals, health systems, HIEs, and affiliated providers and medical devices, resulting in improved care coordination, increased cost savings and efficiencies, and enhanced quality of care. In the U.S., Orion Health HIE provides the technology backbone for state and regional HIEs across the country. Orion Health Rhapsody® Integration Engine is used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and nearly every state and local health departments for public health reporting. For more information, visit www.orionhealth.com or connect with us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

 

About NC HIE and CCNC

 

In February 2013, Community Care of North Carolina and the North Carolina Health Information Exchange announced an agreement to work together to facilitate the secure transfer of patient data in an effort to improve physicians’ access to healthcare data and electronic health records. This partnership seeks to provide medical professionals across North Carolina with the information they need to make the best medical decisions for their patients. This collaboration will help improve the quality of care patients receive, control medical costs and put physicians on the right path to achieve Meaningful Use (MU). To learn more about NC HIE, visit www.nchie.org. To learn more about CCNC, visit www.communitycare.org.