A Reciprocal Opportunity

During a web presentation last week regarding getting on board the Nationwide Health Information Network, Holt Anderson, executive director of the North Carolina Health Information & Communications Alliance (NCHICA), discussed the requirements for joining and exchanging data. The questions that followed his presentation quickly brought the discussion to familiar territory: Who pays? His answer: All sides, which shows the importance of having a strong business case....

...Did the opportunity for stakeholders to exchange information with government agencies factor into your road map with regard to NwHIN?

Anderson: What really drives us at NCHICA [is] we started with a clinical problem. [And we] start with clinical leadership, with physicians who want their practice of medicine to be better informed if they can get information from these other sources. We had tremendous support during phase 1 [prototype architectures and trial implementations] and phase 2 [emergence implementations].

We know [there is a great deal of information] across enterprises and across state boundaries, and we know a lot of this information resides in federal agencies. The provider organizations really stepped to the plate with their clinical staff and tech staff. It was significant commitment on their part to engage.