The North Carolina Hospital Association (NCHA) and The North Carolina Medical Society (NCMS) along with Moses Cone Health System and WakeMed Health & Hospitals, today announced they are working with Thomson Reuters and CareEvolution to develop and launch the North Carolina Healthcare Information Exchange (NCHEX).
NCHEX will allow physicians to assemble a "continuity of care" record for each patient, comprising the patient's clinical information from all of the providers participating in the exchange. This enhanced patient information will enable better quality and more efficient patient care.
NCHEX, which is launching with seven hospitals, three freestanding emergency departments and 57 physician practices, is the first step towards a statewide health information exchange (HIE) for North Carolina. It meets all the criteria for an HIE outlined in the ARRA HITECH Act for Meaningful Use.
The exchange will be open to all North Carolina healthcare providers and will actively seek to connect with existing regional health information organizations, health information exchanges, and healthcare information technology systems by leveraging Nationwide Health Information Network Connect and other HIE standards. Organizations interested in joining NCHEX or seeking additional information can visit www.nchex.net.
To reduce costs and implementation time, NCHEX will be built on the infrastructure developed for the North Carolina Hospital Emergency Surveillance System (NCHESS). The NCHA and the North Carolina Department of Public Health developed NCHESS in 2004 to capture real-time clinical data from 114 hospital information systems across North Carolina.
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