One of my readers pointed out that NaviNet was offering their Health Information Exchange (HIE) solution to state governments for free. Here’s a short part of the press release:

NaviNet (formerly NaviMedix), America’s largest real-time healthcare communications network, today announced the NaviNet Health Information Exchange (HIE), a solution that combines the NaviNet Provider Network of more than 770,000 providers nationwide, and NaviNet technology and services. The NaviNet HIE is now available to all state governments and U.S. territories at no cost, enabling more efficient implementation and expansion of local health data exchange. Adoption of NaviNet HIE minimizes technology investment requirements, providing states and territories a rapid and cost-effective way to offer their own branded health information exchange to electronically connect physicians, hospitals, insurers and existing HIEs in their regions. NaviNet is already used by two out of every three U.S. healthcare providers, and leading national, commercial and Blues health plans, resulting in significant costs savings to the industry.

I always find it interesting when someone starts offering something for free. I always have to ask myself the question of why they would offer it for free. I don’t know NaviNet that well, but it seems like this free offering is 2 fold. First, it seems like they probably want to sell the HIE to people other than government. Second, I think that they probably want participants in the HIE to also use NaviNet’s billing services.

What’s really interesting to me also is that it seems like NaviNet is basically a billing company (although, I don’t know them that well). I find this really interesting since I’ve often seen the argument that we’ve been exchanging billing information electronically in healthcare for a while. Since this is the case, many people have wondered why we couldn’t also exchange other healthcare information. Is this offering from NaviNet, the realization of this principle?

Free EMR has been going well for a while. We’ll see how Free HIE goes.