Health information exchange or HIE allows doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and other health care providers and patients to access vital medical information. It also allows them to share medical information securely and electronically. HIE improves the speed, quality, safety, and the cost of patient care.For many years patient's files were stored using paper methods, transferring them by mail, fax or transferred it by hand to every appointment. Changing to electronic file improves the completeness of patient's medical records. It makes decision making of healthcare providers avoid readmissions, avoid medication errors, improve diagnosis, and decreases the amount of times test are reordered. There are other benefits to health information exchange …show more content…
They are able to use secure messaging to ask point related questions and receive shorter response times than waiting on a phone calls. This method is efficient with the doctors as well, they are not being overloaded with incoming phone calls and patients avoid miscommunication or missed phone calls. Once they leave their doctor they are able to review doctors' notes in the case the patient did not remember what was discussed. Health information exchange has many benefits, however there are many challenges as well. HIEs have to select one or more vendor to deliver services in a successful manner. In their selection, they have to make sure the vendor is the best. They must offer experienced consulting services and support staff and offer a solution suite to meet their stakeholder's needs. Legal costs and time used to create data sharing agreements are directly proportional to the number …show more content…
Adding more parties to sharing data along with the time it takes to complete a cohesive DURSA agreement can be lengthy and costly. Another challenge of HIE is that HIEs can sometimes be viewed as providing duplicative information or solutions offering patient portals or patient related information directly to the consumer.Health information exchange has three key forms: directed exchange, query-based exchange, and consumer mediated exchange. Directed exchange is the “ability to send and receive secure information electronically between care providers to support coordinated care” Examples of patient information include ancillary test orders and results, patient care summaries, or consultation reports. The encrypted patient information is electronically sent securely between parties with an established relationship. Query-based exchange is the “ability for providers to find and/or request information on a patient from other providers, often used for unplanned care. Query-based exchange is used to search and discover accessible clinical sources on a patient” For example, a query-based exchange can assist a provider in obtaining a health record on a patient who is visiting from another state, resulting in more informed decisions about the care of the patient. Consumer-mediated exchange is the “ability for patients to aggregate and control the use of their health information
Introduction Health is the way that gives a freedom from disease and sickness. Technological innovation has yielded a phenomenal growth in health care to deliver good health practice and patient outcome. One of the paramount outcome from technology in health care is ehealth. ehealth is an emerging practice in the fields of health and medical, that is delivered through technology by communication and information technologies to improve efficiency, effectiveness and quality of clinical and business process that are in practice by healthcare institutions for better healthcare even in remote places. Using ehealth will help in advanced quality of care, minimises the medical errors and from the organizational view it helps in financial aspects and is easy to work 2.
HIPAA has changed Healthcare Information in so many ways when it comes down to EDI. The system is designed to simplify electronic transactions and codes sets. The simplification of HIPAA was designed to show a consistency and operational improvements within the payer and the provider. In order to transfer healthcare information, it has to comply with the standards of HIPAA for that transaction.
The health care providers are able to quickly finish the patient charting. The Electronic Medical Records allows you to have flexibility to schedule more patients
The article stated that business associates can offer DDE as an option to health plans and also DDE can be customized as well. Since DDE is an option, health plans can offer DDE to certain providers but DDE system must meet the requirements of HIPAA because of the information that is transmitted via electronic. However, some critical issues involved were sending as a transaction which is not DDE and health care plans are not to offer incentives to use the DDE system. Also, electronic data interchange (EDI) could not replace DDE because it is an option to providers but EDI has to used (Nachimsom,
Health Information Exchange Providers across the U.S. are turning to the Health Information Exchange also known as HIE. HIE provides secure online access to patients charts among a network of providers, hospitals, clinics, doctor’s offices, and pharmacies who join in the exchange, so they can have timely electronic access to records their patients will allow them to share. For patients this means having their medical records available no matter where they go and for providers it means having instant access to life saving information when seconds count
Throughout the past decades, many acts have been passed in support of health information technology and the adaptation of such technology. Two of those acts, the HIPAA (health insurance portability and accountability) Act and the HITECH (Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health) Act, focus on protecting patient health information and utilizing health information technology. Although these acts bring about many positive changes within the healthcare industry, there are some downsides regarding the implementation of these acts, as there are with many acts that are passed. Both of these acts provide security to patient health information, however, the HITECH Act contributes more to the utilization of the electronic health
Enhanced IT that supports consumers, payers and providers via analytical tools and resources relieves financial and human capital burdens. Data collection and distribution empowers collaboration and coordination of care, regardless of where a patient receives treatment. End-to-end seamless integration connects facilitates faster registration, efficient referrals and consultations, results sharing and patient
The Health Insurance and Portability and Accountability Act ( HIPAA) of 1996 provides security provisions and data privacy for protecting a patient’s medical information. HIPAA has guidelines to ensure that a patient’s confidentiality is maintained while allowing the communication of a patient’s medical records between certain bodies or people or officials. Officials that a patient’s medical records can be shared with are other health care providers, health plans, business associates, and health care clearinghouses. HIPAA protects all “ individually identifiable health information”. There is a specific protocol to follow when sharing a patient’s medical information.
Confidentiality and data breaches are a few of the main concerns, as many providers become neglectful when sharing patient electronic health information. Current use of Electronic Health Records (EHR) has proven to be helpful for hospitals and independent medical practice to provide efficient care for patients. Balestra reports that using computers to maintain patient health records and care reduces errors, and advances in health information technology are saving lives and reducing cost (Balestra, 2017). As technology advances EHR are going to continue to be the main method of record keeping among medical providers. Therefore, staff and medical providers need to be trained on how to properly share patients EHR safely and in a secure form in order to maintain patient confidentiality.
This includes creating, managing and following patient data. The American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) defines information governance as “an organization wide framework for managing information throughout its lifecycle and for supporting the organization’s strategy, operations, regulatory, legal, risk, and environmental requirements.” In today’s healthcare system, it is more important than ever to know and understand how healthcare information is created, transferred and used. Due to the development of systems such as electronic health records and clinical decision support systems it is important that health information maintains its reliability and validity throughout its
A well-organized system will save time when a doctor is in talking with a patient because all the pertinent information will be easy and quick to find. No patient wants to sit there and wait for the doctor to find the information or ask, "why are you here again?" Being able to easily navigate the system and have things well-organized will be in the best interests of the facility, to better care for their patients. Resources: The American Health Information Management Association.
Data use agreements and connections between HIE organizations are also a concern with health information exchange. “The types of healthcare partners that are needed is a challenge when determining the trading area needed for a viable HIE” (PHII, 2005). Although there are challenges, there are opportunities with implementing a health information exchange system. One opportunity is HIE can improve reporting to public health and in return improve the health of the community.
Providing patients with a personal copy of their medical records places the patient in the security role. Asking the system to provide copies to a person or persons unknown is more complex. Asking the organization to electronically transmit information to an unknown site may require the organization on to verify the recipient can handle PHI. The risk of transmission error is significant. The patient may request only portions be sent.
Kaiser Permanente has been equipped since 2007 with Health Connect; which is the largest private electronic health record implementation in the world. This is a highly sophisticated electronic program that integrates inpatient, outpatient, and clinic medical records with appointments, registration, pharmacy, and billing for all kaiser members. In addition, this electronic program includes an entire medical library with a whole set of care support tools which are accessible to doctors, nursing staff and patients (Kaiser Permanente, n.d.). At kaiser permanente; nurses are expected to print out “the after-visit summary” (AVS), which contain the doctor recommendations for each patient that we see.
It is obvious that the healthcare organizations have over-stretched the limit of manual processes and cannot move forward without depending on technology and interoperability. Interoperability is the enabling of communication across software and hardware from multiple vendors so as to provide comprehensive and accurate patient information in an electronic health records (EHR) (Kim, 2005). However, without standardization in the communication, patient information exchange through interoperability cannot be fully understood and use effectively for the intended purpose. For example, if every provider within health information exchange network is allowed to use words, terms, and statements anyhow, there would be ambiguity in the communication leading