Questions, answered.
What is Smart Health Network?
A neutral routing network that connects providers, payers, and patients through one shared hub. It starts where the pain is most urgent — prior authorization, where a routine approval that takes days can move to hours — and the same single connection carries more administrative work over time, like coverage checks and claims status. Data stays where it lives; the network moves the questions and answers, not records.
Where do my medical records live?
Exactly where they do today — with the doctors and insurers who hold them. The network connects those systems and routes sealed requests between them. It doesn’t build or keep a central copy of anyone’s records: we move questions and answers, not records.
Is my data sold or used to train AI?
No. Smart Health Network never sells anyone’s data and never licenses it to train AI models. It doesn’t build a central copy of records in the first place — it connects the systems that already hold the data and routes questions and answers between them. Individuals are connected too: you can see how your information is used and consent to who may access it.
Is my information secure?
Yes — by design. Smart Health Network never gathers records into a central database, so there’s no central target to breach. Information travels protected, the network routes it without reading or keeping it, and every request is logged so it can be reviewed. Keeping data where it already lives — instead of pooling it — means there’s far less to lose.
A prior authorization includes clinical documentation — how is that handled?
Today that documentation travels by fax, portal upload, and mail, with no protection and no trace. On the network it travels sealed, directly from the provider to the insurer that needs it. The network routes it without reading or storing it, and writes a record of the request the patient can see. What changes isn’t whether documentation moves — it’s that it stops moving unprotected.
Can I see who’s asked about me?
Yes. The network is built so patients can see a record of requests made through it: who asked, when, and under what authority.
Who owns and controls it?
No single party — by design. Smart Health Network is operated by a mission-locked Delaware public benefit corporation, with separate bodies that set the rules, represent patients, and steward the shared resources. No one — no payer, no provider, no government, and no acquirer — can unilaterally change its rules, ownership, or purpose. The neutrality is built into the structure, not promised.
What happens if the network is unavailable?
Care continues. The network falls back to today’s existing processes — and because it never holds anyone’s records, an outage can’t cut a patient or clinician off from their data.
Is this only for prior authorization?
Prior authorization is the starting point because it’s the most urgent pain. The same single connection can carry closely related administrative work over time, like coverage checks and claims status.
How is this different from what already exists?
Clearinghouses and point-to-point connections solve important pieces of the problem. What’s been missing is a neutral connection point that no payer or provider owns — one governed connection that reaches every counterparty, with patient-visible audit and no central record store. If today’s rails had solved this, approving routine care wouldn’t still take days of fax and phone — more than nine billion fax pages a year.
Does this align with federal requirements?
Yes — it’s built for them. The CMS Interoperability and Prior Authorization rule requires payers to support FHIR-based prior authorization, meet defined decision timeframes, and report metrics publicly ahead of January 1, 2027. CMS has been clear that meeting that bar takes the whole ecosystem working together — “alignment across the entire ecosystem, not isolated adoption within individual sectors.” Smart Health Network has pledged to support the CMS Health Technology Ecosystem, and is the connective layer that turns each organization’s readiness into working, cross-sector exchange — rather than every payer and provider building one-to-one.
How does this relate to TEFCA?
TEFCA and the networks under it are building the national framework for sharing clinical records — moving a patient’s health information between the organizations that care for them. Smart Health Network handles a different layer: the administrative transactions that run alongside care — prior authorization, eligibility, claims status — which use different standards and aren’t what TEFCA was built to carry. The two are complementary. Smart Health Network doesn’t replace TEFCA; it adds the administrative routing the clinical-exchange framework was never designed to do.
How does this fit with my state’s health information exchange?
It complements it. State health information exchanges do important work, and Smart Health Network doesn’t replace them. It’s the administrative routing layer that connects providers, payers, and patients to reduce prior authorization burden — working alongside the infrastructure a state already has.
How is it paid for?
Smart Health Network is run as a common utility — at the minimum cost needed to sustain it, not to maximize profit. Any surplus is reinvested in the network rather than extracted, and it’s designed to be self-sustaining over time. Delaware’s launch is supported by the state’s federal Rural Health Transformation Program.
Does it cost patients anything?
No. Patients are never charged to use Smart Health Network — a permanent commitment, not a temporary offer.