The number of HIE initiatives is rising at a steady pace, and now—collectively—has a coverage area spanning the entirety of the U.S. as well as the U.S. territories of the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and American Samoa.
How Can a HIE Benefit Your Practice?
According to the e-Health Initiative’s sixth annual survey of health information exchanges, “Migrating Toward Meaningful Use: The State of Health Information Exchange,” operational exchanges have positively affected physician practices and helped them increase efficiency without disrupting patient care.1 Users reported better access to test results, fewer hassles in locating information, and a reduction in staff time spent handling lab results, radiology reports, and clerical tasks. Survey respondents reported that practice efficiencies resulted in shorter workdays and an “improved quality of practice life.”
The most common types of data currently exchanged through HIEs include:
- Laboratory;
- Medication;
- Outpatient laboratory results;
- Outpatient episodes;
- Radiology results;
- Emergency department episodes;
- Inpatient diagnoses and procedures;
- Care summaries;
- Inpatient discharge summaries;
- Pathology;
- Dictation/transcription;
- Claims: pharmacy, medical, and/or hospital; and
- Enrollment/eligibility.
HIE organizations throughout the U.S. are now embarking on aggressive exchange initiatives that expand the services offered and are growing both in the number and diversity of exchange participants. In addition to simply facilitating the exchange of data for the population of patient medical history, participating physicians are able to take advantage of active services related to data exchange, including results delivery, electronic prescribing, enrollment or eligibility checking, electronic referral processing, disease or chronic care management, quality improvement reporting for physicians, disease registries, public health surveillance, connectivity to personal health records, and clinical decision support.
HIE and the National Scene
Policy makers understand that health reform goals of higher quality, more affordable care will not be met without broader and deeper penetration of active information exchange across the entire health delivery system.
To further develop HIE organizations and make exchange opportunities available to all providers, the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act”—working through the “Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act” (also called the “HITECH Act”)—seeks to help the U.S. realize large-scale success in the electronic exchange of health information through policy and funding that will support its growth. The “HITECH Act” provides for a certification framework, grants to states to facilitate infrastructure, grants to develop HIT regional extension centers that will encourage effective and efficient use of technology, and support through a Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN) governance authority. It is expected that these resources—combined with the approximately $48 billion in incentive payments (and penalties) tied to “meaningful use” of electronic health record (EHR) systems (including clinical data exchange)—can create a business imperative for more information exchange.
The Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN)
To maximize the value of HIE, efforts are currently underway to connect HIE organizations so they can exchange health information. This would basically create a “health Internet” that would allow providers to access a patient’s health information stored anywhere in the U.S.
