Health Information Exchange

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) states that in order to realize meaningful use of the EHR technology, healthcare providers are obliged to apply the technology in a approach that enriches quality, safety, and efficiency of healthcare delivery; ebbs healthcare inconsistencies; involves patients and families; enriches care coordination; expands population and public health; and guarantees sufficient privacy and security guards for personal health information. (U.S Department of Health and

All the patients’ files should be backed up at least on a weekly basis to ensure that none of the information is lost. (HIPAA, 2011) Another way for accountability of the electronic health record is to have each person in the office has a key card or password to access the system. This will allow for the physician to check back and see if anyone is releasing information or making changes that are not authorized. This also allows for physicians to find out who made changes to a patients record if information is inaccurate. (HIPAA, 2011)

One of the challenges of health information exchange is privacy and security. Even though having electronic health information exchange reduces a lot of privacy and security issues, it raises new issues as well. A breach that formerly affected a single paper record now can expose an entire database of patient records. At the same time, health information exchange presents powerful new ways to improve the privacy and security of patients ' data, including encryption, authentication and authorization controls, and electronic audit trails. Two of the biggest challenges we’ve encountered are patient matching/master patient index synchronization issues and the vendors’ variable use of interoperability standards. The biggest issues we’ve experienced, so far are relate to the MPI synchronization of patients across all the entities. Public HIEs, as well as the private HIE vendors, should focus on this challenge. Technically, interoperable platforms, EHR’s, are often hindered by the inability to determine an exact patient match, because the eMPI solutions aren’t robust enough. This also potentially creates data integrity and patient safety issues, if the clinical data goes across multiple records. There also some struggles with the variable use of the interoperability standards between the EHR vendors. One of

After decades of paper based medical records, a new type of record keeping has surfaced - the Electronic Health Record (EHR). EHR is an electronic or digital format concept of an individual’s past and present medical history. It is the principle storage place for data and information about the health care services provided to an individual patient. It is maintained by a provider over time and capable of being shared across different healthcare settings by network-connected information systems. Such records may include key administrative and clinical data relevant to that persons care under a particular provider. Examples of such records may include: demographics, physician notes, problems or injuries, medications and allergies, vital

EHR was created to have a technical way to securely exchange private and personal medical health information in hopes to improve the quality of care, decrease medical errors, limiting paper use, reduction of health care cost, and increasing a person access to affordable health care. A mandate was created for EHR stating that health records can be accessible to all facilities with patients having the capability to access their own health records at any time. Ameliorating the quality and convenience of care given to a patient, allow for cost saving measures, engage the patient and family to participate in their care, improve accuracy of medical diagnosis, and enhance the efficiency of the overall outcome of the patients’ health.

The Health Information Exchange has proven to be convenient and beneficial in essence of improving patient and health professionals’ ability to access patient medical histories and records by providing quicker, more reliable access. There have been some challenges recognized with the implementation of the health information exchange. While speeding up the process of retrieval of sensitive medical records has been a blessing, the process of electronic delivery of medical records has also been seen by some as risky. The electronic health information exchange allows health care providers to release vital private patient healthcare information via

How data is captured varies from institution to institution. In order for data to be well understood, data should have a definition that is consistent and comprehensively understood by all users of the data. Standardization of how data is captured is critical to allow the production and export of data needed to support quality assessment, decision support, exchange of data for patients with multiple health care providers and public health surveillance. Patient safety and quality improvement are dependent upon embedded clinical guidelines that promote standardized, evidence-based practices. Unless we can achieve standardization with terminology, technologies, apps and devices, the goals of EHR implementation will not become a

Electronic health information exchange (HIE) allows doctors, nurses, pharmacists, other health care providers and patients to appropriately access and securely share a patient’s vital medical information electronically. With improving the value, speed, safety, and cost of the totals patient care.

To start, structured data capture (SDC) initiatives should be utilized in order to leverage existing EHR interoperability standards. SDC seeks to identify how interoperability technology can be used to access a template containing common data elements, populate the template with the correct common data elements from existing EHR data, and then store the template or transmit it elsewhere. Using this framework will give healthcare professionals a standard way to collect data and populate the templates, thus creating a way to access, display, and store the data. It is also important for hospitals to ensure that they are working to meet meaningful use requirements, which will help the organization to be more prepared and educated about interoperability and related issues. The Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health Information Technology states that the ultimate goal is to have an interoperability system in place by 2024, one that puts “the person at the center of [the] system that can continuously improve care, public health and science through real-time data access.” In order for the goal to be achieved, however, specific actions need to be taken. It is not enough to simply state what needs to be done, but rather it is the combination of the talk and actions that will make the end-goal

HIE face a range of challenges as they try to get hundreds and even thousands of participants in sharing data. Getting data in front of doctors and other clinicians is one of the biggest challenges HIEs face. Ideally, it would be delivered directly to a providers' EMR system, so when a patient goes to an outside lab for blood tests, the results would show up in the electronic record at the doctor's office, and the doctor would be notified that the results are there. However, with limited EMR use across the country, HIEs have had to provide alternative delivery methods. HIE is considered to be one of the key components of the national health IT infrastructure being established by the HITECH Act. Policymakers and health care providers believe this health IT infrastructure will produce a number of benefits, many of which are directly related to HIE.

Health Information Exchange (HIE) is an electronic way for health care providers, patients, and payers to access and securely share medical information. There are data breaches everyday so patient and providers are concerned about the privacy and security of the HIE. Patients fear that sensitive health information related to dire diseases will be disclosed and used against them in decisions related to health insurance coverage or employment according to Mertz (2009, p.1). Providers are concerned that they will be breaking some health privacy laws of different states if they use a HIE. However, in essence as long as the HIE is following the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) Privacy and Security Rules then the provider and patients should be safe. This is because HIPPA regulates covered entities such as healthcare providers, health insurers, healthcare clearing houses. They all must follow HIPPA regulations when accessing, using and disclosing your medical information.

Key activities such as Health Information Exchange and Patient engagement are reported in this category and the 90-day reporting requirement is like other measures as above. CMS is more flexible with the reporting of the electronic patient information for the first year which is believed to change in coming years. However, reporting measures like public health will earn bonus points for them(3)

Policies and procedures govern the operations of health information exchange (HIE), and many factors must be taken into consideration during their development or revision. They set expectations for the workforce, delineate staff training and accountability, and must be part of an ongoing education and compliance program, enforced by leadership. When using this environment, you want to make sure the information is protected and secures the confidentiality of the person.

Health Information Exchange is the electronic movement of healthcare information amongst organizations according to the national standards. HIE as it is widely known, serves the purpose of providing a safe, timely, and efficient way of accessing or retrieving patient clinical data. Health Information Exchange allows for doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and other vital healthcare professionals to have appropriate access and securely share vital medical information regarding patient care. Health Information Exchange has been in efforts of developing for over 20 years in the United States. In 1990 the Community Health Management Information Systems (CHMIS) program was formed by the Hartford Foundation to foster a development of a centralized data repository in seven different geographically defined communities. Many of the communities struggled in securing a cost-effective technology with interoperable data sources and gaining political support. In the mid-1990s a similar initiative began known as the Community Health Information Networks (CHINs) with the intention of sharing data between providers in a more cost-effective manner. In 2004, the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research Health Information Technology Portfolio was funded $166 million in grants and contracts to improve the quality and safety to support more patient-centered care. This was the beginning of the progress we have seen in HIE today. Health Information Exchange devolvement serves the purpose of improving

“An electronic health record (EHR) is a digital version of a patient’s paper chart. EHRs are real-time, patient-centered records that make information available instantly and securely to authorized users.” (healthit.gov) The EHR mandate was created “to share information with other health care providers and organizations – such as laboratories, specialists, medical imaging facilities, pharmacies, emergency facilities, and school and workplace clinics – so they contain information from all clinicians involved in a patient’s care.” ("Providers & Professionals | HealthIT.gov", n.d., p. 1) The process has proved to be quite challenging for providers. As an