Building Substance
The North Carolina Health Information Exchange Authority’s (NC HIEA) vision is to build a more robust health information exchange, now called NC HealthConnex, to link all health care providers across North Carolina enabling them to access information to support improved health care quality and outcomes.
Moving towards this vision involves a shift in how NC HealthConnex gathers, shares, and stores data. We believe that by focusing on technical innovations, delivering operational efficiencies, and offering value-added services to participants and the health care communities they serve will put NC HealthConnex on the path to successfully deliver its project goals.
Technical Innovations
Clinical Notifications – Participants can now utilize the Notifications feature in the NC HealthConnex Clinical Portal to follow a patient’s care across the continuum. The NC HealthConnex portal offers notifications for time sensitive events like emergency room visits, critical lab results or hospital discharges.
When notified of these events in near real-time, care managers and others following a patient’s care can intervene early to ensure the patient gets the right care and follow up in a timely manner. This is especially important for provider organizations participating in Accountable Care Organizations or other risk-based payment arrangements.
Avoid missing a critical patient care event, by signing up for notifications. This can be done from within the clinical portal for all users. Users can also sign up to receive the notifications via their direct secure messaging account, which now has a single sign-on component to the portal.
Operational Efficiencies
EHR Integrations - The NC HIEA continues to work with a list of EHR vendors (Allscripts, AthenaHealth, eClinical Works, Cure MD) to build multi-tenant connections that will enable participants to access patient records in NC HealthConnex via an EHR integration. We hope to have these agreements in place in the near term so that those healthcare providers who have signed Participation Agreements with the NC HIEA can begin utilizing NC HealthConnex for the secure exchange of patient information. We recommend that healthcare providers contact your EHR vendor and request their timeframe for connection so you can begin your planning and preparations.
Value-Added Services
Direct Secure Messaging with Communicate Webmail – NC HealthConnex offers providers a DSM solution that is certified by DirectTrust and allows participants to send secure, encrypted messages between health care providers. Use cases for DSM include care coordination between health care providers who share patients, but more and more this form of secure communication is being used to replace fax, phone, and/or mail in the workflows of healthcare-related organizations whose professionals don't necessarily use EHRs and don't directly benefit from the MU incentive bonuses. DSM is part of the bundle of services offered by NC HealthConnex.
Options for sending and receiving messages using the Web Communicate solution include:
1. Via the NC HealthConnex web portal
2. Message exchange integrated directly into the provider’s EHR (allowing for customization of Direct addresses/domains).
Provider Directory – NC HealthConnex has created a directory of the secure email addresses of NC HealthConnex participants and North Carolina providers participating in DirectTrust. The current number of HISP addresses is just over 5,000, and we expect that to grow as NC HealthConnex grows. The directory will be made available to NC HealthConnex participants in a .csv file. Participant Account Administrators will receive instructions for access to this file in the next few weeks.
If healthcare providers would like to have their DSM address added to the NC HealthConnex Provider Directory, please contact Christie Burris at Christie.Burris@nc.gov. We plan to update the directory on a quarterly basis. The next issue will come out the end of February.
North Carolina Immunization Registry – After years in the making the NCIR pilot is almost complete! Upon completion, the technology will be available for other participants and will enable two-way (bi-directional) flow of vaccination information through upload and query technology. The NC HIEA team is working with the NCIR team at the DHHS Division of Public Health to determine next steps in the rollout of this new functionality. More to come!
Operations
Working Groups Organizing
- The NCHICA HIE Task Force meets once every two months at the North Carolina Health Information and Communications Alliance (NCHICA). The next meeting is scheduled for November 15 and is open to NCHICA members. For more information, contact Allison Parker, allison@nchica.org.
- The Behavioral Health working group will be held November 22 in downtown Raleigh.
- The Disease Registries working group plans to meet in December, but a date and location have not yet been decided.
If you are interested in learning more about any of these groups, please send an e-mail to Alice Miller at Alice.Miller@nc.gov.
For NC HealthConnex Participants
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Teletown Hall Coming Soon! The NC HIEA will hold a webinar for Participant Account Administrators to better understand the credentialing process and logging in to the Clinical Portal. This is being scheduled for mid-November – stay tuned!
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Documents Available to Participants – Welcome Packet (includes templates for newsletter article, press release, FAQs for employees and patients); Clinical Portal User Guide and training video; Privacy and Security Policies have been sent electronically to participant account administrators.
In Other News…
Last Year to Get Started in the NC Medicaid EHR Incentive Program - If you haven’t already heard, the NC Medicaid EHR Incentive Program gives eligible providers the chance to earn $63,750 over six years if they are using their certified EHR to meet Meaningful Use. Program Year 2016 is the last year to start participating and the last year to receive a first year payment of $21,250. If you’re an eligible provider type with a certified EHR and you see 30% Medicaid patients, now is the time to get started. There are resources available to help you attest for a payment. The NC Medicaid EHR Incentive Program has attestation guides to walk you through the process step by step, a library of FAQs, webinars to bring it all to life and a dedicated help desk to answer your questions. Visit the website for more information and attest today!
Source: NCHICA Update October 2016
EHR Contract and Health IT Guide -The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) recently released two practical, easy-to-understand tools to help healthcare providers get the most out of their health information technology (health IT), such as electronic health records (EHRs): an EHR contract guide - PDF and a newly expanded Health IT Playbook.
The new contract guide, EHR Contracts Untangled: Selecting Wisely, Negotiating Terms, and Understanding the Fine Print, explains important concepts in EHR contracts, and includes example contract language to help providers and health administrators in planning to acquire an EHR system and negotiating contract terms with vendors.
The Health IT Playbook is a dynamic, web-based tool intended to make it easy for providers and their practices to find practical information and guidance on specific topics as they research, buy, use, or switch EHRs. Both resources are available on the ONC website.
Source: Ohio Health Information Partnership
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I connect to NC HealthConnex?
1) The first step in connection is reviewing and signing the Participation Agreement. If you have questions regarding this process, please contact Alice Miller via email Alice.Miller@nc.gov or by phone 919-754-6912.
2) The second step is to have an ONC-ATB certified EMR product that can send HL7 version 2.0 and higher.
3) The third step is to identify three points of contact within your medical practice that will collaborate with the NC HIEA and our technology partner, SAS, to complete a successful connection.
Do you have a list of EMR systems that support connection to NC HealthConnex?
Any ONC-ATB certified EMR product that can send HL7 version 2.0 and higher will support the connection to NC HealthConnex. Following is a list of EMR vendors that are connected to NC HealthConnex currently or that we have experience with building the connection:
Allscripts Professional
Allscripts Touchworks
Amazing Charts
Aprima
AthenaHealth
Centricity
CureMD
eClinicalWorks
Epic
Greenway Primesuite
McKesson Practice Partners
Medinformatix
MicroMD
NextGen
Patagonia
Questions? Call the NC HIEA business office at 919-754-6912 or send an email to hiea@nc.gov.
About the North Carolina Health Information Exchange Authority (NC HIEA) and NC HealthConnex:
In 2015, the North Carolina General Assembly established a state-managed Health Information Exchange Authority (NC HIEA) to oversee and administer the NC Health Information Exchange Network (NCGS 90-414.7). Housed within the NC Department of Information Technology’s (DIT) Government Data Analytics Center (GDAC), the NC HIEA operates North Carolina’s statewide health information exchange--now called NC HealthConnex. NC HealthConnex is a secure, standardized electronic system in which providers can share important patient health information. The use of this system promotes the access, exchange, and analysis of health information to help improve care coordination, quality of care, and enable better health outcomes. Additionally, the legislation requires that by February 1, 2018, all Medicaid providers must be connected to the HIE in order to continue to receive payments for Medicaid services provided. By June 1, 2018, all other entities that receive state funds for the provision of health services, including local management entities/managed care organizations, also must be connected.