Leading Health Care and Information Technology Groups Endorse Common Framework for Health Information Exchange to Support Improvements in Health and Healthcare

Thirteen Groups Collaborate in Responding to Federal Government's RFI on National Health Information Network

January 18, 2005 (New York, NY and Washington, DC)

National Health Information Environment Summary: A Collaborative Approach

We believe that general adoption of a common framework can permit health information to be delivered when and where it's needed in a private and secure manner and improve the quality of health care.

Thirteen major health care and information technology organizations have come together to recommend a consensus approach to the design of a national health information environment. Key elements of their approach are:

• Establishing an information environment that facilitates and structures connectivity - through encouraging adherence to precisely defined, uniform technical standards, common policies, and common methods, known as the "Common Framework".
• Defining a Health Information Environment that allows diverse networks of users, grouped together through proximity, stakeholder trust and patient care needs, to exchange information efficiently.
• Connectivity built on the Internet and other existing networks.
• The "build" of the new information environment happens incrementally, through accretion of sub-networks - many of which already exist but need to have the ability to be linked together to provide maximum benefits to patient care.
• The environment is private, secure, and is built on the premise of patient control and authorization.
• Personal health information remains with health care providers, patients and other trusted partners - and is accessed and exchanged only when it is needed, with proper authorizations and security.
• Creating a national, public interest Standards and Policy Entity (SPE) that recommends the standards and policies that comprise the Common Framework and the ongoing requirements for interoperability.
• Leveraging existing open, non-proprietary standards to enable the exchange of health information.
• Accurate patient identification based on uniform and standardized methodologies but without a new, mandated, national, unique health identifier.
• Record Locator Services (RLS) are created and controlled regionally or within other sub-networks, to help authorized parties learn where authorized and pertinent information is housed - but never containing that information.
• A mechanism for validating compliance with the standards of the Common Framework is required for the early phases, but the network becomes self-validating over time.
• The information environment facilitates growth, innovation and competition in private industry.
• Continuing investments in health information technology come from multiple, public and private sources. Incentives for adopting interoperable electronic records systems are built into routine payment and operations at the regional and local level and are tied to use of the Common Framework.

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Comments from Collaborating Organization Participants

About the Thirteen Collaborating Organizations