CONTRIBUTOR
A new collaboration between the Electronic Healthcare Network Accreditation Commission (EHNAC) and the CARIN Alliance, will seek to advance consumer exchange across the healthcare industry. The EHNAC is a nonprofit organization that develops standards and accreditation for organizations that exchange health care data electronically. It is working with the CARIN Alliance, which is focused on the consumer side of health information exchange, to push the process to new heights.
In bundling the CARIN Code of Conduct and EHNAC’s criteria review process, the collaborative has announced the CARIN Code of Conduct Accreditation Program (CCCAP). As the security of health data remains an everlasting priority for both consumers and vendors, the CCCAP has the potential to elevate customer experience and satisfaction across the healthcare industry,
“We envision a future where any consumer can choose an application of their choice to retrieve both their complete health record and their complete claims information from any provider or plan in the country using HL7® FHIR® APIs, and the CARIN Code of Conduct has been instrumental in helping to advance these efforts,” said Ryan Howells, program manager for the CARIN Alliance and principal at Leavitt Partners.
The CCCAP offering will be brought to health plans, health systems, EHR vendors, implementers of HL7® FHIR®-based application programming interfaces (APIs), and third-party app developers. The initiative comes alongside a growing demand for healthcare-data accessibility, as personal health information must be readily available and reachable for all consumers.
“Since the CARIN Alliance launched MyHealthApplication.com which provides the ability for applications to self-attest to the CARIN Code of Conduct, it’s been important to continue to collaborate on implementing and fostering adoption of an industry-wide consumer-facing application attestation and certification framework,” said Lee Barrett, executive director and CEO of EHNAC. “We believe this partnership with the CARIN Alliance to develop a voluntary certification program is the next step in that process.”
Those who attain the CARIN Code of Conduct Accreditation will be listed on the CARIN My Health Application site and the EHNAC Accredited Companies page. Furthermore, the CARIN Alliance and EHNAC have made numerous other changes to align with CARIN Code of Conduct criteria, including an update to its Trusted Dynamic Registration & Authentication Accreditation Program (TDRAAP) and the Trusted Network Accreditation Program (TNAP).
By drawing from both the consumer and organizational perspective, the collaboration could make unprecedented strides.
“While the certification program is not required by policy makers or CARIN, we are pleased to partner with EHNAC to create an exceptional third-party accreditation program built on the foundation of the CARIN Code of Conduct which has become the industry’s de facto standard for applications not covered by HIPAA and the only code named in federal regulation as an ‘industry best practice’,” said Howells.
For more information or to apply for the CARIN Code of Conduct Accreditation program, click here.
