Communications, Connected Care and HIEs, Part 3

... continued from our previous two posts.

State HIEs that support ONC Direct

ONC Direct is the easiest standard to meet for eye care and the most effective at transmitting eye care information. Once a practice is able to communicate through ONC Direct that practice can communicate with every office, clinic or hospital in health care that is Direct-enabled. 

As stated earlier, all state HIEs must eventually support ONC Direct. At the present time, some states support the ONC Direct communications standard and some do not. Therefore, it’s important to understand that ONC Direct is not dependent on the state HIE in order to function. Any provider who wants to utilize this national communications standard can do so by signing up for ONC Direct through a health information service provider (HISP).*

In this case, there’s a roadblock to foresee. When health systems are part of an HIE that is not yet supporting ONC Direct, individual providers may not want to pay additional fees for ONC Direct. Health system or state HIEs tend to be the ones putting in place a repository and their fees are already expensive. Providers want the HIE to provide all communications. So, the best way to proceed in these situations has to be evaluated on an individual or community basis. One key consideration however is that ONC Direct allows cross-state communications whereas as state HIEs may be limited within the state. Any HIE that currently supports ONC Direct is easy to connect with as all providers who have ONC Direct can communicate with any other provider, no matter where in the country.**

Note * 
Think of a HISP as similar to your local ISP, or Internet Service Provider. You know the Internet is there but you need an ISP to connect you to it. In the same way, a HISP connects you to the health information exchange and ensures the secure transmission of the patient health information you are sending to another provider.

Note ** 
Our next post is dedicated to ONC Direct. In the meantime, see two previous posts on this topic in Archives, February 2012, Part 4A and 4B dated Feb. 20th and 22nd.

Alistair Jackson, M.Ed.