Our Experts include:

Larry Albert

As President of Integic Healthcare, led the development of the world’s largest, globally deployed electronic health record system.

Melissa Chapman

As CIO for the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Chapman established the Federal Health Architecture (FHA) initiative.

Dr. Wyatt Smith, MD

Served as Deputy CIO for the Military Health System and as a member of the American Health Information Community (AHIC) Policy Board.

Dr. Wendell Ocasio, MD

Former chief architect for AHLTA and a principal developer of the original NHIN architecture.

Les Westberg

Technical Lead for the CONNECT gateway development team and a noted leader within key standards bodies, including HL7 and the Andover Working Group.

Mary Walker

Co-founder of the National Health IT Collaborative for the Underserved and a member of the leadership team for the Technology Informatics Guiding Educational Reform (TIGER) initiative.

Capitalize on HITECH Funding

Prepared for Meaningful Use?

The HITECH Act currently being implemented makes significant funding available to facilitate the adoption of certified electronic health record (EHR) systems. An independent provider can earn up to $65,000 over a four year period in the form of higher Medicaid or Medicare reimbursement rates. Eligible hospitals could receive between $2-8M in incentive payments through their use of a certified EHR system. In addition, the cost of developing communitywide Health Information Exchanges (HIE) is being underwritten through the State Health Information Exchange Cooperative Agreement Program and the Beacon Community Program, worth $564M and $220M respectively.

Under some scenarios, organizations will need to begin use of a certified EHR within FY2011 to earn the maximum reimbursement. Likewise, annual penalties may be incurred in the form of reduced Medicare reimbursement rates for those organizations that have failed to adopt the technology by 2015.

Eligibility is based on fulfillment of Meaningful Use criteria, which are intended to demonstrate that the EHR is being used to improve patient care. These stipulations include interoperability with other systems as well as the ability to transmit specific information to designated authorities.

It is also important to recognize that the initial reporting criteria required for 2011 is just a starting point. Over the next four years, the granularity of the data as well as the complexity of the reporting relationships expected to grow considerably.

Meeting these stipulations won’t be a one-time only event. Rather, HIEs and providers will need to put in place a strategy and infrastructure for maintaining this compliance across ever-changing requirements.

Are you ready?

NHIN CONNECT: Proven, Open Source Solutions for Meaningful Use

The Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN) provides a shared infrastructure for meeting many of these interoperability and information exchange requirements. NHIN was designed to serve as a ‘network of networks’, linking health information exchanges (HIEs) – regional health data networks – and providers in multiple locations together as a fully-integrated and interoperable health information network. NHIN offers users a coordinated system for querying, vetting, accessing and retrieving health information from these participating bodies as an alternative to trying to maintain a universal database of records or a single patient identifier.

Developed under the Federal Health Architecture (FHA) initiative, the CONNECT Gateway is the reference standard for the secure exchange of medical records via NHIN. It has been adopted by all major members of the federal healthcare community, including the Department of Defense (DoD), the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) and its subsidiaries, including the Centers for Medicaid & Medicare (CMS), Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). A number of state, local and private sector organizations have adopted the technology as well.

For both public and private sector entities, the CONNECT Gateway offers a number of compelling advantages over custom development:

1. Open Source Technology – Lowers both adoption and sustainment costs.
2. Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) based – Provides greater extensibility and adaptability, including simpler upgrades.
3. Standards Compliant – Offers assured interoperability with all NHIN-compliant interfaces.
4. Federally-Supported – Benefits from long-term federal commitment to continued development and enhancements.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) has already determined that the CONNECT Gateway will play a significant role in meeting these new provisions. Available in 2010, CONNECT 3.0 will include a number of new features designed specifically to facilitate the automated reporting of Meaningful Use data to applicable entities. ONC has also pledged to make further enhancements available to keep pace with additional requirements for Meaningful Use as they become applicable.

CONNECT with Agilex for Meaningful Use

Agilex Healthcare brings together a world-class team of thought leaders and practitioners to address the significant challenges of health information exchange:

1. Our understanding of NHIN and the CONNECT platform – in terms of technology, policies and operations – is unsurpassed, as our team established the concept, helped to define the architecture and created the solution.
2. Our experience customizing the CONNECT platform for the unique requirements of complex, heterogeneous and dynamic healthcare environments is without peer.
3. We embrace a clinical-driven approach with physicians and other healthcare executives in key leadership positions.
4. We possess a deep understanding of the terminologies, taxonomies and semantics of healthcare, drawn from decades of work in the field.

Unlike EHR vendors, we specialize in health information exchange and can help you leverage open source technology, developed and supported by the U.S. Government, to meet your enterprise needs.

As a key member of the CONNECT development team since its inception, Agilex continues to work closely with ONC officials to update the platform to support the requirements for Meaningful Use. At the same time, we also support other organizations in leveraging the CONNECT Gateway as their enterprise health information exchange platform, including compliance with these new mandates.

Based on this experience, we can offer a variety of proven services for capitalizing on the CONNECT Gateway’s unique attributes. These services are customizable to the specific requirements of each engagement and include:

Consulting

Requirements Analysis

Enterprise Architecture

Grant Planning

Development

Gateway Configuration

Adapter Development

Data Modeling

Implementation

System Integration

Testing & Certification

User Training

To learn more, request a free analysis to determine how the CONNECT gateway can help your organization enable Meaningful Use.