etHIN’s Perspective on Patient Opt Outs, Requests for Data, and Changes to Medical Records

Tennessee residents are automatically opted in for sharing their medical data among healthcare providers as permitted under HIPAA. Patients have the right to ‘opt out’ or not allow sharing of their protected health information among their healthcare providers, including providers who participate in East Tennessee Health Information Network (etHIN). The patient also has the right

How An HIE Approaches Continuous Patient Data Quality Improvement

An HIE in Tennessee has tapped an AI-based platform to reduce duplicate patient EHRs as part of its patient data quality improvement efforts. Source: Getty Images https://ehrintelligence.com/features/how-an-hie-approaches-continuous-patient-data-quality-improvement By Hannah NelsonAssistant Editorhnelson@xtelligentmedia.com February 08, 2023 – The cornerstone of a health information exchange (HIE) is continuous patient data quality improvement, according to Pam Matthews, chief executive officer and

Tennessee Department of Health Updates the List of Reportable Diagnosis Codes for Drug Overdose Reporting

Effective January 2023, the Drug Overdose Reporting (DOR) List of Reportable Diagnosis Codes was expanded in order to capture nonfatal overdose events more accurately across the state and improve surveillance for nonfatal polysubstance overdoses. Facilities will be required to report drug overdoses containing 78 new ICD-10-CM codes under three new categories of substance (cannabis and

East Tennessee Health Information Network (etHIN) Selects 4medica to Reduce Duplicate Patient Records

Knoxville, TN, January 4, 2023 – East Tennessee Health Information Network (etHIN) announced today that it has engaged 4medica®, a leader in healthcare data quality and matching technology, to deploy its cloud-based Data Quality Platform to improve patient matching and health data quality. Established in 2005 and headquartered in Knoxville, etHIN reaches 80% of communities

Syndromic Surveillance Reporting for Urgent Care

The Tennessee Department of Health (TDH) is actively working to broaden syndromic surveillance beyond eligible hospitals to include urgent care facilities as more patients in Tennessee utilize these services for immediate medical needs. Syndromic surveillance data can be used to monitor and detect changes in disease frequency and guide preventive measures. Public Health uses an

Cures Act Definition of EHI Expanded to Include Additional Data

The Cures Act Final Rule limited the scope of electronic health information (EHI) that must be shared to data included in USCDI version 1 for approximately 18 months after the Final Rule publication date to allow stakeholders time to ramp up their information sharing capabilities and processes. On October 6th, stakeholders must begin exchanging more

NPPES Digital Contact Information

What is it and how you can comply with the CMS rule The 2020 CMS Interoperability and Patient Access Rule mandated a centralized directory of providers’ digital contact information be published by the National Plan & Provider Enumeration System (NPPES) to improve interoperability and the efficiency and effectiveness of electronic health information exchange. While providers

2022 Annual Participant Survey Results

etHIN performed its annual Participant Survey in January 2022. The survey is designed to measure Participant satisfaction with etHIN’s products and services. We greatly appreciate everyone who took time to respond to the survey. Participants are pleased overall with the services and support they receive from etHIN. Two areas receiving suggestions for improvement were printing

Pam Matthews Named CEO/Executive Director at East TN Health Information Network

Pam Matthews, RN, MBA, FHIMSS, CPHIMS, has been selected by East Tennessee Health Information Network (etHIN) as its Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Executive Director. “We are excited to have Pam join etHIN as CEO,” said etHIN Board President Mike Ward, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer of Covenant Health. “We were fortunate to

Access Community Wide Data Inside your EMR Using Integrated Single Sign-On with Patient in Context Lookup

Single Sign-On (SSO) with Patient in Context (PIC) lookup seamlessly enables access to a patient’s medical record in etHIN when you open the patient’s medical record in your EMR system. User authentication happens automatically in the background, keeping the patient in-context, so providers are able to see not only the patient information in their own EMR but also all cross-community information that has been submitted to etHIN by other providers.