Carequality has announced the publication of the Carequality Trust Principles, the policy foundation for connecting health data sharing networks throughout the U.S. Carequality, a Healtheway initiative, is a public-private collaborative supporting nationwide health IT interoperability to accomplish in healthcare what the telecommunications industry did to link cell phone networks.
The Carequality community that has come together to develop and implement the principles includes representatives from over 70 organizations from across the healthcare ecosystem. Providers, physicians, consumers, networks, vendors, government agencies, payers, behavioral health, long term care, hospice and home care, and research are among those represented.
Those implementing the Carequality framework agree to legal terms that operationalize the Trust Principles, which include:
- HIPAA Compliance: All participants agree to implement HIPAA-compliant security and privacy practices, even if they are not otherwise subject to HIPAA requirements.
- Nondiscrimination: Carequality implementers will not discriminate against other Carequality implementers to block interoperability.
- Cooperation: Carequality implementers agree to cooperate with all other Carequality members to address connectivity issues, differences in standards interpretation, and resolution of disputes.
- Transparency: Carequality implementers will make their information handling practices transparent and easily available to the public.
- Acceptable Use: All members agree that they will deploy connectivity through Carequality only for the purposes permitted (for example, treatment) in the Carequality Implementation Guide governing each use case.
- Local Autonomy: Carequality implementers may honor their own local rules so long as they are applied consistently and do not unfairly or unreasonably limit interoperability.
The full set of Carequality Trust Principles are available on the Carequality website at http://healthewayinc.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Carequality_Principles-of-Trust_Final_Carequality-template.pdf.
