Statewide health information exchanges (HIE) continue to play a vital role in fostering the exchange of patient data in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since the start of the pandemic, HealtHIE Nevada has seen a 36 percent increase in data exchange, ultimately giving care providers a more robust informational surveillance of health cases, care summaries, test results, imaging exams and physician notes.

“Similar to how the federal government relaxed HIPAA requirements to advance Telehealth solutions during this worldwide quarantine, this emergency access allows our organization to give doctors access to crucial medical information on their patients to combat deadly COVID-19 cases,” said Michael Gagnon, executive director, HealtHIE Nevada, in this recent press release.

While other U.S. states can more freely share useful data without consent from patients, Nevada law requires that health care organizations and patients take multiple steps in filing paperwork that formally gives permission to have their health data shared among their doctors. 

The vast majority of other states, including Arizona and Utah, automatically enroll patients, but allow them to opt-out of health data sharing if they so choose. This opt-out process continues to protect patient privacy but allows access to significantly more data with far less administrative burden on already busy providers, offering higher value to patients.

As highlighted in this recent EHR Intelligence article, HealtHIE Nevada partnered with RosettaHealth in 2019, to use its HealthBus solution to easily translate health data transport protocols. This enabled the HIE to streamline patient registration and provide patient data to all providers during and after patient care.

For health care facilities, this technology allows them to easily share patient data and access the medical records contained in the HIE directly from within their own EHRs. This enhanced ability to retrieve patient data from HealtHIE Nevada is key in reducing physician burnout and streamlining use of the full patient-centric medical record contained in the HIE.

HealthBus is a SaaS-based solution that enables full HIE capabilities for sending and receiving all standardized exchange formats, such as IHE (push, query-retrieve), Health Level-7 (HL7) Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), direct messaging and Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR). HealthBus offers real-time network analytics capabilities, which include detailed connection status as well as metrics and logs about each facility, feed or protocol.

To learn more about how RosettaHealth can assist with any health information challenges you might have, book a free consultation with one of our interoperability experts.