On February 13, 2023, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra recognized Health Gorilla for achieving operational, privacy, and functional requirements to exchange health data nationally under TEFCA.
Once QHINs are fully implemented, if designated, Health Gorilla will act as a connectivity broker to enable nationwide data exchange for an expanding set of healthcare organizations, supporting permitted purposes such as Treatment and Individual Access Services to begin with, and future additional use cases such as Payment, Health Care Operations, Public Health, and Public Benefit Determination.
The application approval allows Health Gorilla to proceed further through the QHIN designation timeline. When fully designated, individuals and health care organizations will be able to connect to Health Gorilla’s QHIN and exchange health information in compliance with TEFCA.
Health Gorilla has become one of the first companies to have their application approved to become a Qualified Health Information Network (QHIN). The approval was announced by the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Xavier Becerra at a celebratory event in Washington DC.
In 2016, the 21st Century Cures Act called for the establishment of a Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA) that specifies a floor for universal interoperability across the United States. Through the new network of federally designated QHINs, healthcare organizations will be able to easily connect and exchange health information securely on a nationwide basis across the United States. With the application approval, Health Gorilla successfully fulfilled the governance, functional, and operational requirements for application approval to serve as a QHIN under TEFCA, moving forward in the process toward official designation later this year.
Once QHINs are fully implemented, if designated, Health Gorilla will act as a connectivity broker to enable nationwide data exchange for an expanding set of healthcare organizations, supporting permitted purposes such as Treatment and Individual Access Services to begin with, and future additional use cases such as Payment, Health Care Operations, Public Health, and Public Benefit Determination.
Since beginning our pursuit of a QHIN designation, we have assembled a team of interoperability experts who have held leadership roles at ONC, Carequality, CommonWell Health Alliance, The Sequoia Project, and more.
Health Gorilla is committed to supporting legal, functional, and technical requirements for those health information networks certified as QHINs.
As a Health Gorilla QHIN participant, organizations would be able to leverage: