healthcare technology

The EHR interoperability challenge is what stands between a physician's ability to look up, extract, and track a patient's medical activities and records at medical sites other than their own. This could be at a laboratory where a patient's specialty blood work is being analyzed or they're having surgery on an inpatient or outpatient basis.

When it comes to tracking these patients, it's literally as they move about in the sphere of the healthcare world. The interoperability challenge occurs because you need your EHR to talk to systems outside your practice.

Solving this challenge means maintaining continuity of care for patients, minimizing or eliminating the duplicity of services, and helping physicians share patient information so they can gain insight from specialists that would complement their diagnoses.

Many EHR companies aren't willing to share access to their systems unless a physician is part of their overall user base. If you work in a particular hospital or practice that has their product, these particular companies will share information with physicians. The problem is they won't work with peripheral players, or physicians who are unaffiliated with the hospital or practice where their EHR is installed.

Why is it in the hospital's interest to provide access to patients via their EHR?

Sharing access to patients via the hospital's EHR creates a win-win situation where the hospital can keep the patient in their system.

these are excerpts from an interview David Wasserman, an advisor with the practice solutions and medical economics group at the Massachusetts Medical Society.

read more at the original  http://www.diagnosticimaging.com/ehr/solving-ehr-interoperability-challenge

“Universal EHR” structures, in which every citizen’s electronic health record is connected to a single national system, are tied to higher trust in the healthcare system and higher value for patients, 

Unified electronic records have also prompted national governments to address issues of privacy and security, data integrity, and health information exchange that are left up to the private sector in other countries – with varying degrees of success.

Half of the 16 countries included in the index have universal EHRs, while the other half have let a combination of free market forces and regulatory guidance dictate the course of health IT adoption.

The eight countries with universal EHRs saw an average overall “Value Measure” of 47.29, the report says.  The Value Measure is a combined score based on access to care, patient satisfaction, and an efficiency ratio score.

Now, Healthcare providers in the United States generally don’t harbor very warm feelings for their electronic health records (EHRs).

Despite efforts from vendors and regulators to improve the experience of interacting with these foundational health IT systems, dissatisfaction and frustration with usability issues and fragmented information are still causing users’ blood to boil.

It may seem counterintuitive, therefore, to suggest that expanding the industry’s reliance on EHRs is actually the key to making EHR use less stressful and more useful – but that is exactly what the 2018 Future Health Index, commissioned by Philips, seems to indicate.