Closing the Referral Problem in Distributed Care Networks
February 9, 2019 — There have been any number of people and companies working tirelessly to solve healthcare’s interoperability challenges……Why haven’t current efforts yielded greater interoperability? Because in large part, they have relied on pre-planned, point-to-point integration or members-only sharing collaboratives. While each of these can be effective, they inevitably exclude significant portions of a broad network of affiliates, health workers and community healthcare organizations with whom they collaborate (primary care, specialty care, SNF, etc.).
CMS is Getting Serious About "Promoting Interoperability"
By Justin Sims
June 21, 2018 — Last month, CMS announced a major overhaul of the “meaningful use” EHR incentive program for hospitals. They intend to replace the incentives, in place since 2011, with “Promoting Interoperability” or PI, beginning in January 2019. This plan demonstrates a renewed commitment to creating a healthcare ecosystem that actually exchanges health records in support of better patient care.
The Year of Universal Medical Record Sharing
January 19, 2018 — Ask any doctor if they can freely share digital patient records outside of their organization, or access patient information stored in another organization’s EMR, and the answer is typically a resounding “no”. This unfortunate reality perpetuates the use of fax and express or postal mail and contributes to frustration and burnout. In a recent study, 56% of physicians cited too much charting and paperwork as the primary cause. In 2018, this can and must change.
Resistors and Connectors in EMR Interoperability
September 14, 2017 — According to ONC, over 96% of hospitals and 78% of doctors use electronic medical records (EMRs). And while broad adoption of EMRs has been effective for enabling quick access to patient records within facilities and streamlining coding and billing, among other benefits, there are still many challenges sharing patient records and communicating patient information outside of the organization, between providers who are competitive, or geographically dispersed, between those using different EMR vendors, and even in cases when using different instances of the same EMR...
Health Data Standardization and the Argument for Push
February 14, 2017 — For many years, a majority of healthcare industry leaders and regulators have envisioned a technology architecture in which essentially all medical information about a given person would be stored or accessible in one location. The record, with the proper rights and permissions, would then be available to every appropriate person on the care team....