For over a decade, stakeholders and policy-makers have been working to digitize the nation’s health care system to, among other goals, enable the electronic exchange of health information between providers. Recently these efforts have driven the creation of legal entities known as “Health Information Exchanges” (HIEs). HIEs are regionally-based groups of providers and/or hospitals that have contracted with one another – sometimes under the requirements of a state law – to electronically exchange protected health information (PHI) on shared patients at the point of care. The federal government has played a role in enabling and incentivizing the development of HIEs, but has not passed laws that control the creation or operation of HIEs. States, however, have started to pass legislation aimed at developing and operating HIEs.
To learn more about the benefits of HIEs, and the role of the federal and state governments in establishing HIEs, we invite you to read our Fast Facts and Myth Buster below.
Fast Facts: What are the benefits of a Health Information Exchange (HIE)?
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