What is FHIR?
Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) is a standard describing data formats and elements and an application programming interface for exchanging electronic health records. As healthcare records are increasingly becoming digitized and patients move within the healthcare ecosystem, their electronic health records must be available, discoverable, and understandable. Further, to support automated clinical decision support and other machine-based processing, the data must also be structured and standardized. HL7 has been addressing these challenges by developing FHIR standards.
FHIR aims to simplify implementation without sacrificing information integrity. It leverages existing logical and theoretical models to provide a consistent, easy to implement, and rigorous mechanism for exchanging data between healthcare applications.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) is calling on the industry to adopt standardized APIs, specifically FHIR, to help allow individuals to securely and easily access structured electronic health information. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is proposing to require programs to implement, test, and monitor openly published FHIR-based APIs as the new standard for interoperability of data.
Why use ProviderConnect Enterprise?
The goal of ProviderConnect Enterprise is to provide interoperability between the County of Santa Clara Behavioral Health Services and its Contracted Providers. This effort will streamline care coordination, significantly reduce dual data entry, establish real-time integration, and improve data quality.
Getting Started
Integration with ProviderConnect Enterprise is started by creating an account at https://fhirtest.netsmartcloud.com Once your account is created and approved as a valid stakeholder, a full Companion Guide will be viewable for the user.
ProviderConnect Enterprise Guides:
- ProviderConnect Enterprise Companion Guide 08/21 (pce-companion-guide-08-21.pdf)
- ProviderConnect Enterprise Dictionary Guide 08/21 (pce-dictionary-guide-08-21.pdf)