The National Association for Trusted Exchange (NATE) is handing off administration of its Provider-to-Provider Trust Bundle to the California Association of Health Information Exchanges (CAHIE) so that it can focus on exchange with consumers. NATE established the bundle in November 2012 as the first national framework dedicated to facilitating Direct messaging among providers.
The trust bundle enables exchange among organizations across the nation, including in California, Oregon, Utah and Alaska. CAHIE will assume operation of the bundle on Oct. 9, 2015, and will complete the transition over the next few months.
Aaron Seib, CEO of NATE, explained the transition this way in a prepared statement: “CAHIE’s commitment to enabling appropriate exchange and their experience operating trust bundles was an important contributor to the decision to transition this bundle to their organization. NATE’s leadership is confident that CAHIE will provide the focus and resources that are required to continue to make these solutions an important option in the nation’s tool set, while allowing NATE to focus on enabling exchange with the consumer.”
In 2013, California state agencies overseeing HITECH funding transferred governance of statewide HIE to CAHIE, which has since initiated a process for voluntary self-governance of information sharing across diverse organizational boundaries through adoption of common consensus policies, technical standards, and business practices. By assuming administration of the Provider-to-Provider Direct messaging trust bundle, CAHIE said it would be able to engage the larger healthcare ecosystem and expand its activities to enable information sharing among providers nationwide.
“California has been a core contributor to NATE since its days as the Western States Consortium, and CAHIE members include inaugural participants in NATE’s Provider-to-Provider Trust Bundle,” said Robert Cothren, executive director of CAHIE, in a statement. “This expanded relationship will allow our members to work more closely with NATE to share health information with consumers, while allowing CAHIE to focus on expanding exchange among provider organizations nationwide.”
As part of the agreement, CAHIE will convene a new national forum to establish consensus policies and procedures to manage and govern the new national provider trust bundle. The new trust bundle will use existing CAHIE and NATE policies and procedures as a foundation, and will include current participants in NATE’s Provider-to-Provider Trust Bundle and other interested stakeholders
