The North Carolina Well being Info Alternate Authority (NC HIEA) has unveiled a strategic doc outlining the way it plans to broaden change capabilities and assist value-based care. One objective is to leverage the NC HealthConnex well being info change infrastructure extra broadly to assist social providers and community-based organizations.
NC HIEA mentioned it will work to determine, along with companions, a formalized state Well being Knowledge Utility mannequin and supply requested statewide well being information providers. It is going to develop service-specific price restoration fashions for state businesses, well being plans and different customers who don’t submit information, however for whom receipt of medical information for accredited makes use of circumstances is of excessive worth.
One other objective is to implement a top quality measurement and reporting service to assist suppliers and well being plans.
In his letter introducing the roadmap doc, Sam Thompson, government director of NC HIEA, mentioned his enthusiasm for the NC HealthConnex platform grew throughout his tenure at NC Medicaid as he noticed “the diploma to which North Carolina’s imaginative and prescient for enhancing healthcare—built-in care, value-based fee, enhancing high quality and well being outcomes, addressing social determinants of well being and advancing well being fairness—is based on exchanging full, correct, well timed well being information.”
Over the past a number of years, the report notes, NC HIEA has centered on increasing its community of connections and supporting a rising variety of use circumstances with companion businesses and stakeholder organizations, whereas additionally supporting NC Medicaid’s operational, care administration and steady high quality enchancment efforts. With built-in, value-based care fashions quickly unfolding throughout North Carolina and an amplified want for modernized public well being and security infrastructure, the demand for well timed entry to high-quality medical information is extra pronounced than ever, NC HIEA mentioned.
As of 2024, the state-designated HIE community, NC HealthConnex, connects all acute care and most specialty hospitals statewide, greater than 10,000 ambulatory services and 54 inter/intra-state HIEs, together with the Veterans Administration and Division of Protection through nationwide networks.
Amongst its aims are to allow state laboratory digital take a look at orders and outcomes (ETOR). An ETOR service replaces guide, paper-based processes with an digital, closed-loop course of and improves medical determination assist workflows, analytics and notifications. Implementing this service with native well being departments and different services will scale back administrative burdens on each ends and expedite lab outcome supply.
The NC HIE may even search to increase bidirectional change and single sign-on (SSO) functionality. NC HIEA notes that some NC HealthConnex members entry the consolidated, statewide affected person well being report inside their observe EHR via bidirectional integration or SSO know-how. This built-in entry will increase utilization of the statewide well being report and affected person information from nationwide networks. One objective is to construct SSO functionality with extra EHR distributors and collaborating organizations. One other is to extend bidirectional change through new FHIR question choices.
A key objective is to enhance statewide well being information liquidity—the flexibility for information entered as soon as right into a system to be securely saved and likewise simply accessible to others concerned with the care of a affected person—by enabling FHIR retrieval throughout NC HealthConnex providers.
This entails establishing governance guidelines for FHIR and TEFCA information entry. The group plans to onboard to a Certified Well being Info Community (QHIN) inside TEFCA, and deal with rising FHIR use circumstances, together with Medicaid, public well being and different state company FHIR queries and bulk FHIR change to assist affected person entry, surveillance efforts, and different HIPAA- coated use circumstances. It is going to additionally leverage API providers to share information with NCDHHS for related use circumstances.
The group additionally plans to analyze integration with North Carolina Division of Well being and Human Companies’ NCCARE360, a statewide coordinated care community, to allow sharing of health-related social wants screening and referral information and quick access for customers throughout techniques. On the route of NCDHHS, it is going to search to offer SSO from NCTracks, NC Medicaid’s claims and eligibility system, to NC HealthConnex, enabling Medicaid suppliers’ straightforward navigation from a affected person’s eligibility and enrollment standing to their statewide affected person well being report.
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