New England Health Exchange Network – NEHEN

Sunday, September 19th, 2010 at 18:21

(NEHEN) is a consortium of regional payers and providers who have designed and implemented a secure and innovative health information exchange for reducing administrative costs and improving the quality, safety, and efficiency of patient care. NEHEN technology has changed the way administrative, clinical, exchange, and ePrescribing processes are performed in member organizations.

The New England Healthcare Exchange Network, Inc. (NEHEN) promotes the interoperability of health information technology, electronic health records, and clinical and administrative health information exchange across organizational boundaries in the New England health care community.

Since 1998, membership has grown from 5 founding members to over fifty active members (see list below) including renowned hospitals and health plans such as Beth Israel Hospital, Harvard Pilgrim HealthCare, Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Massachusetts Eye & Ear Infirmary, among others.

NEHEN offers its members tools to address the challenges faced by the healthcare industry. NEHEN is a collaborative, payer- and provider-directed solution for connectivity, administrative simplification, and clinical data.

The following information is from Information Week at http://www.informationweek.com/news/galleries/healthcare/interoperability/240001675?pgno=3

The New England Health Exchange Network has a long history. NEHEN was launched in the late 1990s by a group of New England healthcare organizations to share data with payers in an effort to streamline administrative transactions, including insurance eligibility checks. In recent years, NEHEN has been extending its services to support clinical data exchange. In 2009, NEHEN strengthened that strategy by acquiring MA-Share, which was an initiative of the Massachusetts Health Data Consortium to help New England healthcare providers share clinical data.
Among the services offered by NEHEN is NEHENClinical, a set of software tools that allow health information systems, including EMRs, to send and receive clinical information with other providers and payers. Built on a flexible framework, NEHENClinical can accept any clinical transaction that uses the HL7 2.5.1 or Continuity of Care Document (CCD) specification, route it securely and reliably, and deliver it to another exchange partner, including providers, payers, and government agenies. NEHEN members have open access to NEHEN’s underlying database and transaction routing engine so that participating organzations can integrate the tools into the rest of their health information technology workflow and architecture.
NEHEN uses a tiered subscription model based on organization size. NEHEN has “no grant funding, we are a member-funded, member-directed organization,” said Sira Cormier, NEHEN program director.

NEHEN Products and Services

NEHEN has several products that serve the administrative and clinical health information exchange needs for both payers and providers including:

Administrative Data Exchange – NEHENClassic is their flagship revenue cycle management solution for exchanging HIPAA-standard administrative transactions between providers and payers
Clinical Data Exchange – NEHENClinical gives members the ability to send and receive clinical information for improving not only the quality and continuity of care but also the cost of healthcare for all participants.
Connectivity Hub – NEHENHub helps member organizations manage their connectivity to insurance payers more simply.
Hosted Provider Portal – NEHENNet provides small providers with an affordable approach to implementing a portal
ePrescribing – NEHENRxGateway is designed to enable the provider, payer, and pharmacy community to safely and efficiently conduct the most important and highest volume transactions and data exchanges that support electronic prescribing.

Here is some additional health information exchange information you may enjoy reading.

Maine launches first-in-the-nation medical image archive Lewiston Sun Journal

Maine launches first-in-the-nation medical image archive. The archive is expected to free health care providers from the hassle and cost of copying scans to CDs when a doctor wants to review patient medical images taken by another provider. Piloted by HealthInfoNet the state’s health information exchange and more.…

NEHEN Partners: