NHIN Direct may impinge on state HIE service plans

In launching NHIN Direct, tools designed to make it easier for small providers to share electronic health information securely, health IT policymakers are forcing states to rethink their plans for rolling out health information services in their communities.

NHIN Direct, the brain child of the Health IT Policy Committee's NHIN workgroup, would enable small healthcare organizations to ramp up health information exchange quickly by offering them basic network transport services for sharing records securely over the Internet. Time is of the essence since providers must be able to show by late 2011 that they can participate in health information exchange in order to qualify for federal health IT incentives. But offering short-cuts for these providers might throw a wrench into state plans to bundle such services into the menu of HIE offerings they plan to market to providers in their states, workgroup members acknowledged at a meeting. It would certainly throw into question the plans of those state HIEs which planned to offer secure networking transport exclusively.