EHNAC, CARIN Alliance Announce New Accreditation Program

The Electronic Healthcare Network Accreditation Commission (EHNAC), a non-profit health IT data standards development organization, has announced a new accreditation program created in partnership with The CARIN Alliance.

The CARIN Code of Conduct Accreditation Program (CCCAP) will encompass the CARIN Code of Conduct and EHNAC’s criteria review process as an effort to support greater trust related to consumer health data access.

This voluntary program will be available to payers, health systems, EHR vendors, implementers of HL7 FHIR-based application programming interfaces (APIs), and third-party app developers, EHNAC mentioned.

“We envision a future where any consumer can choose an application of their choice to retrieve both their complete health record and their complete claims information from any provider or plan in the country using HL7 FHIR APIs, and the CARIN Code of Conduct has been instrumental in helping to advance these efforts,” Ryan Howells, program manager for the CARIN Alliance and principal at Leavitt Partners, said in a press release.

This new voluntary certification program elaborates on the CARIN Code of Conduct’s established self-attestation approach. However, this program is not required by CMS or CARIN.

“While the certification program is not required by policy makers or CARIN, we are pleased to partner with EHNAC to create an exceptional third-party accreditation program built on the foundation of the CARIN Code of Conduct which has become the industry’s de facto standard for applications not covered by HIPAA and the only code named in federal regulation as an ‘industry best practice,” Howells said.

As part of the 21st Century Cures Act, the CMS Interoperability and Patient Access final rule required payers and providers to enable seamless patient data exchange across the care continuum. To comply with the interoperability and patient access final rule, most provider organizations have implemented APIs.

This was one of several critical federal initiatives to improve patient access to personal health information via an application of choice leveraging HL7 FHIR APIs.

“Since the CARIN Alliance launched MyHealthApplication.com which provides the ability for applications to self-attest to the CARIN Code of Conduct, it’s been important to continue to collaborate on implementing and fostering adoption of an industry-wide consumer-facing application attestation and certification framework,” said Lee Barrett, executive director and CEO of EHNAC.

“This includes focusing on providing the highest level of stakeholder trust for all healthcare stakeholders – patients, providers, health plans, third-party app developers, and many others,” Barrett continued.  “We believe this partnership with the CARIN Alliance to develop a voluntary certification program is the next step in that process.”

Alongside this release of the CCCAP, EHNAC has launched other programs to further align with the CARIN Code of Conduct criteria.

Earlier this year, EHNAC released new versions of program criteria for three of its accreditation programs: the Trusted Dynamic Registration & Authentication Accreditation Program (TDRAAP-Basic and TDRAAP-Comprehensive) and the Trusted Network Accreditation Program (TNAP-QHIN).

A pivotal update to TDRAAP-Basic and TDRAAP-Comprehensive was the addition of CARIN Code of Conduct criteria for applicable organizations.

Both accreditation programs will encompass criteria that require applicants to confirm the possibility of future testing due to emerging threats and other factors, for which the candidate will be provided at least 60 days' advance notice.

“EHNAC’s three newly enhanced accreditation programs are designed to ensure compliance and stakeholder-trust while mitigating risk as organizations address these ever evolving legislative and regulatory revisions,” Barrett said in a previous press release.