ONC renews DirectTrust cooperative agreement for second year

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) has renewed its cooperative agreement contract with DirectTrust, a nonprofit trade alliance that promotes the Direct Protocol, for an additional year.

DirectTrust exceeded the goals set out in ONC’s Exemplar Health Information Exchange (HIE) Governance Program, according to the organization.

DirectTrust sets policies and standards for secure HIE, and operates a voluntary accreditation program for Health Information Services Providers (HISPs) in partnership with the Electronic Healthcare Network Accreditation Commission. Accredited HISPs provide message exchanges from within EHRs, web portal and other applications for the purposes of healthcare coordination and patient engagement.

To date, DirectTrust has enrolled 49 organizations, including EHR companies, connectivity vendors and state HIEs, in more than 80 accreditation and audit programs. That exceeded the goal of 50 programs set for the first year of the cooperative agreement, according to DirectTrust.

“In a remarkably short period of time, our members have created a national network for secure and trusted health data exchange over the Internet. EHR users in hospitals, medical practices and other healthcare facilities, as well as their patients, will all benefit from the ability to move data securely across organizational and IT boundaries via Direct. The work has been done on time, and on target,” said DirectTrust President and CEO David C. Kibbe, MD, in a statement.