It’s important that Health Information Exchanges (HIE) are on your radar. It’s particularly important that you understand what your state’s status is with HIE.

You May Be Facing Mandatory Reporting Requirements

Health Information Exchanges (HIE) are an initiative related to the Affordable Care Act and the HITECH Act. Their purpose is to ease the communication between the EHR/systems of various providers of health care, because the EHRs themselves are behind in doing so (i.e. interoperability).  In 2010, the federal government crafted funding for the states to head up their own HIE initiatives.

Each state is handling things differently.  For example, here in North Carolina, all providers that receive reimbursement from Medicaid (about 2 million people) or the State Employee Health Plan (over 700,000 people) are required to connect to the state HIE system by June of 2019. The State Employees’ plan is serviced by BCBS of NC, and so this effects the vast majority of mental health clinicians who accept payment from that plan.

What is Your State Doing?

One of the biggest challenges of this requirement, is that most of the EHR/Practice Management Systems that we use are not currently set up to provide these kinds of connections. Worse than that, most of them report they won’t be ready in the next year.  Because of this, it is very important that everyone understand what is going on with HIE in their state. You can see how much money your state received, as well as the name of the entity in charge of your HIE here. (North Carolina therapists can find details on my page dedicated to HIE here: https://www.tameyourpractice.com/nc-hie-mandate/)

Want More Details?

If you’d like a more detail about this, check out my Counseling Today article that provides more explanation and reasons to be aware of HIE. Want some help understanding what HIE means for your practice? Schedule a Consultation