Improve the quality, affordability and availability of healthcare through effective and efficient information exchange and management.

Mission

As an initiative of WEDI, WEDI SNIP will:

• Facilitate a collaborative, industry-wide approach and readiness for the implementation of health information technology (HIT), HIPAA, ARRA/HITECH, other healthcare regulations, clinical initiatives, and standards including those for security, privacy, EDI transactions, code sets, and identifiers.

• Foster implementation of HIT, HIPAA, ARRA/HITECH, other healthcare regulations, clinical initiatives, and standards in a manner that preserves the confidentiality, integrity and availability of health information, while enabling efficient business processing.

• Provide timely information to industry stakeholders regarding upcoming requirements.

• Provide educational sessions and material for implementation of initiatives.

• Provide an impartial forum for coordinating necessary dialogue among implementers of HIT, HIPAA, ARRA/HITECH, other healthcare regulations, clinical initiatives and standards to further business process improvement.

• Establish opportunities for collaboration, compile industry input, identify barriers and success factors, and document industry "best practices" for improving business processes.

• Facilitate effective and efficient information exchange and information management at multiple levels including but not limited to individual, community, state and federal.

• Support a network of regional stakeholders needed for a coordinated national implementation.
• Coordinate outreach to other related industry initiatives, identifying information gaps and identifying strategies to fill those gaps.
• Recommend an implementation approach and associated time frames for each HIT initiative based on the needs and priorities for each stakeholder group [i.e. Health Plan, Provider, Clearinghouse, Vendor, HIE, HIO, RHIO, state, federal, etc.] and recommend migration paths for trading partners.
• Identify implementation issues and ambiguities within standards implementation specifications and rules; and work with appropriate stakeholders to resolve them.
• Serve as a resource, in coordination with WEDI to help facilitate resolution of business issues arising from HIT, HIPAA, ARRA/HITECH, other healthcare regulations, clinical initiatives and standards implementation.
• Coordinate recommendations, proposals and strategies in collaboration with the Policy Advisory Groups (PAGs) that are compatible with the mission and goals of the WEDI Board of Directors.