What is eHealth Exchange?

Purpose / Problem Addressed

In healthcare, it’s often hard for clinicians to quickly access the right patient information to make timely decisions. eHealth Exchange is presented as a solution that enables faster, more reliable access to needed medical data.

What eHealth Exchange Is

• A non-profit health information network in the United States focused on improving healthcare quality.
• Enables secure, accurate, electronic exchange of consenting patients’ medical information.
• Intended benefits include speed, quality, safety, and lower cost of patient care, plus more informed clinical decisions.

How the Network Works

• Connects federal agencies and the private healthcare sector across all 50 states.
• Participants create one connection to the eHealth Exchange hub, which connects them to shared patient records across the nationwide network.
• The network is described as including ~75% of U.S. hospitals, plus many other provider types such as:
  • doctors and clinics
  • long-term care
  • dialysis centers
  • pharmacies
• Described as the largest query-based network in the country.

Why Organizations Choose It (Key Features)

1. Direct private-sector connectivity to federal agencies

   • Examples include military/veterans healthcare and the Social Security Administration.

2. Vendor-independent nationwide network

   • Works regardless of participants’ underlying health IT/EHR technologies.
   • Claims that 30+ EHR technologies are used on the network.
   • Emphasizes being fast and affordable to join and begin sharing records.

3. Broad set of use cases, including:

   • case reporting
   • automated push notifications (including emergency medicine support “through Pulse” and related initiatives)
   • granular information sharing within medical records
   • quality reporting

4. Interoperability via Carequality

   • The network is described as part of Carequality, a framework that connects existing health information networks across the country so they can share data securely across network boundaries.

Interoperability / Exchange Scope

Participants can share information with:

• other eHealth Exchange participants, and
• organizations in other networks that implement the Carequality framework.

New Capability Highlighted: Electronic Case Reporting (eCR)

eHealth Exchange adds support for electronic case reporting (eCR).

How it works

• Participants’ EHR systems can automatically generate and transmit case reports to public health agencies.

Claimed advantages

• Less manual reporting burden for providers
• Supports cross-jurisdiction reporting
• Enables real-time provider connectivity to public health agencies
• Example: sending COVID-19 testing results and diagnoses to the CDC and other national/state agencies

Scale / coverage claim

• Nearly 100 reportable diseases can be automatically shared by routing to the appropriate local/state/national public health agencies.

Pricing / limits statement

• Participants can send unlimited case reports for no additional fees.

Calls to Action / Resources Mentioned

• Learn more / become a participant: www.ehealthx
• eCR information: www.ehealthexchange.org
• Contact for eCR/use cases: administrator@ehealthexchange.org

Main Speaker / Source (Attribution)

• No specific individual speaker is named in the subtitles.
• The content is presented as an official overview from eHealth Exchange (and its administrator contact).