How Does NEHEN Work?

NEHEN has created a common, member-neutral alternative designed to work equally well for all participating payers and providers. NEHEN provides a method to exchange transactions from participant to participant, without mandating how the service is delivered to the end user, minimizing the impact of NEHEN infrastructure and implementation on each member's organization. NEHEN delivers a standard transaction (e.g., ANSI X12, HL7 CCD, or NCPDP) to each member's doorstep, and each member organization chooses how that transaction is processed internally.

The only prerequisite is that all transactions flowing over the network need to be in a recognized national standard. Having this requirement allows members to achieve significant improvements in the speed and uniformity of many core administrative and clinical processes.

Each provider organization connects directly to each payer or other provider (via VPN or secure web service) in a peer-to-peer fashion, or via the NEHENHub, eliminating the need for third-party handling costs, multiple technologies, and central databases. This secure network provides a high-speed transport mechanism for sending and receiving patient data in real-time or in batch.

While most organizations have integrated NEHEN functions directly into their own management and clinical systems, all have the flexibility to use NEHENExpress - NEHEN’s own browser-based application - to view and manage their transactions outside of their EMR or other core information systems.

NEHEN's priorities are determined by its members' direction. At annual planning meetings, the overall strategy and scope of NEHEN's development activities are set out, and they are discussed at regularly scheduled subcommittee meetings. Unlike vendor-driven health information exchanges, NEHEN's members share what their needs are and NEHEN exists to build the tools to address those needs.

There are no transaction fees for our core services. All members pay a flat monthly membership fee regardless of how many transactions they exchange. The monthly membership fee covers the cost of managing and coordinating consortium activities, and the development and support of common work products like NEHENExpress and the NEHENeGateway