NEHEN is a consortium of regional payers and providers who have designed and implemented a secure and innovative electronic-commerce solution for reducing administrative costs in health care. NEHEN technology has changed the way administrative processes are performed in member organizations.

NEHEN is a business solution to a nagging business problem, a collaborative, payer- and provider-owned solution for connectivity and administrative simplification that:

• Transports HIPAA-compliant transactions
• Has a low-cost of ownership
• Delivers a close-to "all-player" solution to connectivity
• Makes the most of the participating organizations' investment in existing "legacy" systems
• Can be integrated on each organization's terms into claims payment and provider service processes (on the payer side) or into patient access and revenue cycle processes (on the provider side).
• Reduces bad debts and other financial exposures by improving administrative efficiencies
• Shortens the elapsed time to achieve EDI at an appropriate transaction volume level

The primary success factor for NEHEN has been the collaboration between health plans and providers. The members of NEHEN believe that providing EDI (electronic data interchange) capabilities to their trading partners represents an opportunity to improve administrative processes for the entire health care community. As a result, all intellectual property created for NEHEN is shared among the members. Also, if a member individually develops a solution that might benefit the group, that solution is donated to NEHEN. Collaboration has enabled the members to share costs, leverage experience gained by other participants, and accelerate the benefits of administrative simplification.

This collaboration is in fact what makes NEHEN different from a typically competitive environment. Its features and benefits are designed to be balanced in their value to payers and providers alike.