Health information exchanges are poised to redefine how providers and payers interact with one another and show great potential in improving patient care by utilizing a torrent of new data. That same torrent is also causing challenges in HIT infrastructure and HIPPA compliance.
Those were just a few of the key takeaways at California-based Redwood Med Net’s annual conference on electronic clinical data interoperability, held in Santa Rosa on Friday that featured a host of HIT experts from across California and a keynote by John Halamka, CIO at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
But while new reams of patient data will soon become available as providers adopt EHRs, the level of interconnectedness on a large scale is not yet there and differing state laws on privacy present challenges, Halamka said. Still, the promise is hard to ignore.
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“If you look at the entire work flow from patients seen by a (primary care physician) to specialists to follow up care, and recognize the health information exchange can have a significant impact,” Halamka said. “The role of the HIE is that I can extract (data) from the EHR, and when the result is emitted, sent back to the EHR, then there’s the opportunity for the EHR to close the loop. It’s closing the loop to ensure every lab result has a formal follow up.
“Admittedly, all of this is hard,” he added. “We need more hub and spoke than from one EHR to another EHR.”
You can see Halamka’s presentation here (PDF). These two slides show how the Massachusetts Health Information Highway works.
