A statewide health information sharing program is a year old, but only two communities are on board.

Still, officials say Nebraska is ahead of any other in the nation when it comes to the initiative.

The health information a nurse enters at Mary Lanning Memorial Hospital in Hastings could soon be seen by any doctor you may see in the state.

"If I can access information from patients all over the state in two seconds, it's going to speed up time the patients spend in the emergency room. It's going to reduce the redundancy of tests that are done and therefore costs," said Dr. Robert Anderson, chairman of Mary Lanning's Board of Trustees.

The Nebraska Health Information Initiative or NeHII was paid for with state and private dollars.

Mary Lanning is the only hospital to adopt the program outside of Omaha, where it was tested. The Hastings hospital went live on the information exchange on January 26th.

More than 27,000 patients have registered with just 74 opting out.

Officials say patients' number one concern is security.

With what NeHII's president calls "cutting edge security", he likens the system to online banking.

"We recognize the potential for information security breach. It's something we take very seriously. It remains at the forefront of every discussion we have every time we take about expansion of the exchange," said Dr. Harris Frankel.

Frankel says North Platte will be the next community on board. He hopes to draw Lincoln's large population base onto the program soon.

Frankel says the goal is to have the majority of Nebraska participating within two years, and then eventually be able to share information nationwide.

"We will have hopefully participation all around us in the region and really create a center of health information exchange that sits right in the center of the country that we believe can become a model for the rest of the country," said Frankel.

He says NeHII officials have already talked with Wyoming, North and South Dakota, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Colorado.

More than 1.6 million people are already a part of the initiative in Nebraska. Nearly 30 percent are out-of-state patients who received care in the state.

NeHII officials admit their lack of staff for training is making the program's expansion a slow one.

Frankel says pricing for providers is based on "active beds", but if you have electronic records already it's about $20 per physician per month just to view records.

He says Blue Cross Blue Shield is the only "payer" on the system, but Frankel says don't worry about insurers making coverage decisions based on your records.

"The payers are held to a much higher standard, if you will, as it relates to what they can view for the purposes of claims payment," said Frankel.