As you probably know, we’ve been tracking the creation of QHINs under TEFCA for a while. In our interview with Micky Tripathy from ONC about the 21st Century Cures Act, we talked with him about these subjects and he said to watch for the HHS event in February to learn more. That event happened today and the big news coming out of the event was the six organizations that applied and have been officially designated as QHINS.
Here’s the list of 6 organizations that will be the initial QHINs:
- CommonWell Health Alliance
- eHealth Exchange
- Epic TEFCA Interoperability Services
- Health Gorilla
- Kno2
- KONZA
Check out this blog article by Micky Tripathy and Mariann Yeager, CEO of The Sequoia Project (The TEFCA Recognized Coordinating Entity) for more information on the announcement.
If you’ve been following this space at all, most of these names won’t come as a surprise. There was only one on the list that I didn’t know and hadn’t heard was planning to become a QHIN. It is interesting that the coordinating entity applied, but it’s also not a surprise when you know what Sequoia Project does. I’m sure that was part of the discussion when they became the coordinating entity. It will also be interesting to see the dynamics between commercial vendors and non-profits.
Of course, this is the initial list of QHINs. It’s reasonable to expect that there will be more QHINs in the future. ONC has said that they expect applications and additional QHIN applicants to be approved on a rolling basis. Most EHR vendors I’ve talked to have planned to be part of the network through someone like CommonWell (see MEDITECH’s QHIN and TEFCA approach here), but I’ll be watching to see if that changes as QHINs develop.
eHealth Exchange’s Executive Director already shared that not all QHINs will be created equal. No doubt it will be really interesting to see how all this plays out and who gets behind each of the various QHINs. Plus, will companies use TEFCA as a reason to facilitate more sharing of patient information as allowed by the law today or whether they’ll use these new organizations to act like they’re sharing information, but not actually do it? I’m hopeful of the former, but am afraid of the later given past organizations’ approach to data sharing.
What do you think of these new QHINs? What are you watching for from them? Will they be a benefit to patients? Share your thoughts in the comments or on social media.
