eHealth Exchange this week announced that it will be partnering with the Consortium for State and Regional Interoperability – comprising the largest nonprofit health data networks in the U.S. – in its anticipated role as a Qualified Health Information Network.

WHY IT MATTERS
As one of the nation's oldest and largest health information networks, eHealth Exchange brings 13 years of experience to its planned QHIN status under the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT's Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement, or TEFCA.

That includes linking 61 regional and state health information exchanges and five federal agencies, enabling exchange across more than two dozen different electronic health record systems. It supports the secure exchange of more than 14 billion EHR transactions annually.

The Consortium for State and Regional Interoperability, meanwhile, also gathers some of the nation's biggest health information, including Contexture, CRISP, CyncHealth, Indiana Health Information Exchange and Manifest MedEx. Together those HIEs and their affiliated services connect more than 80 million records for patients across several states.

Working together on TEFCA will enable a QHIN with a massive nationwide footprint.

"eHealth Exchange and CSRI's founding health data networks have collaborated for many years," said CSRI president Morgan Honea in a statement.

"This potential nonprofit collaboration allows CSRI to demonstrate the value of regional and state health information exchanges across the country, in the midst of other vendor-based exchanges," added Honea, who's also executive VP of Denver-based Contexture, which oversees data networks in Colorado and Arizona.

THE LARGER TREND
A network of networks eHealth Exchange connects providers to five federal agencies – Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Defense, Indian Health Service, Food and Drug Administration and Social Security Administration – as well as 61 regional and state HIEs. It connects 75 percent of all U.S. hospitals and 85% of dialysis clinics, facilitated by one common trust agreement and one set of APIs.

ON THE RECORD
"We are thrilled CSRI intends to partner with eHealth Exchange, which means CSRI's member organizations will participate with TEFCA through our planned QHIN," said Jay Nakashima, executive director of eHealth Exchange, in a statement. "We aim to provide a seamless experience for organizations such as CSRI to participate in this federally endorsed framework for patient data sharing."

Email the writer: mike.miliard@himssmedia.com
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS publication.