New Hampshire HIO Hits the Ground Running
After years of collaboration and planning, New Hampshire has announced the launch of its Health Information Organization, the NH-HIO, developed with the help of the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services Office of Health Information Technology, the Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative, and the New Hampshire Institute for Health Policy and Practice, as well as over 80 stakeholders. The NH-HIO was officially established by House Bill 489 which was signed into law recently by New Hampshire Governor John Lynch.
Governor Lynch stated,
Technology should do for the health care industry what it has done for many other industries, and that’s create efficiency and lower costs….This new law allows the creation of a health information organization which will mean a faster, easier and more secure transfer of health records, saving time and money, while still protecting patient privacy.
The NH-HIO has been designed to protect privacy and security while creating the infrastructure necessary to help coordinate care, reduce administrative costs and provide easier and timelier access for providers to needed patient information. New Hampshire Health IT Coordinator, David Towne, stated,
I envision that the NH-HIO will be a unifying, collaborative organization that will identify and implement cost-cutting “win-win” health IT initiatives that benefit healthcare providers, healthcare purchasers, and most of all, patients.
The first Board of Directors meeting of the NH-HIO will be held later this month. For more information, the official press release can be found here.
