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November 29, 2007

New Health Information Exchange Network for Providers: Health E Gateway

In response to member requests to have access to a secure and HIPAA compliant network to exchange health information among providers and related health care organizations, the Illinois Hospital Association is pleased to announce the availability of Health E Gateway.

The Health E Gateway provides a secure network by which providers can exchange health information files and images to each other in a secure network environment. The system is available to all IHA members, their physicians, and related health care providers at no charge. This system will replace the former Illinois Healthcare Network (IHN) and will be available starting the first week in December.

While we know all of us are working toward interoperable standards for electronic health records and exchanges, this new network, Health E Gateway will provide an interim solution for providers that want to exchange sensitive information quickly in a secure environment.

Features
Health E Gateway provides a simple solution to meeting the need for rapid exchange of patient print files and images through secure networks. Hospitals, physicians, and related health care providers will have access to the system 24 hours a day, 7 day s a week.

With this new Health E Gateway, each hospital will be able to administer their own account and establish IDs for their own staff, rather than having to work through another party. By allowing hospitals to administer their own IDs and accounts, new or retiring clinicians can be added or dropped once the status of a clinician is known.

Additionally, with the Health E Gateway, there will not be a repository of information. Once a clinician opens a file sent by another clinician, the contents of that file will now reside with the clinicians that sent the file and received the file --- there will not be a retention of any information.

The approach IHA has taken is reflective of the issues discussed and supported by the IHA RHIO Committee in which each provider holds the information of the patients they are responsible for. As time and developments evolve, this can be expanded to create additional federated approaches, including provider held ‘vaults.’

Education and Training
IHA will be conducting some educational programs for those IHA members interested in learning more about the Health E Gateway and how it functions. Once a hospital signs up for the Health E Gateway and appoints a hospital site administrator, IHA will train the hospital site administrator on how to establish accounts for their organization. IHA will also provide educational training as well as support materials for providers using Health E Gateway.

Over the next week, IHA will be announcing additional educational sessions and training programs for providers that want to take advantage of the Health E Gateway to meet their secure health information file exchange needs.

While we will communicate this information by mail, we will also be posting training and educational information for the Health E Gateway on IHA’s web site in this section new Health E Gateway section.

As time progresses, IHA will work with providers to enhance the Health E Gateway so as to provide quick and secure access to health information when it is needed and to meet the varying needs of IHA members. We know this is a step in the right direction to reducing cost and increasing ease of communication among providers.