EHRs and Healthcare Interoperability: The Challenges, Complexities, Opportunities and Reality
Each healthcare practice requires a customized electronic health record (EHR), the more complicated the system of healthcare the more varied EHR products need to be. To reach their optimum use, EHR systems should easily be able to send and exchange patient data when needed. This is only possible in an environment that promotes interoperable healthcare technology.
This allows a more enhanced work flow, decreased redundancies and ambiguity as well as seamless sharing of information between all stakeholders, or from one EHR to another, thus improving the value of care delivered. Enabling data access to the right people at the right time can improve patient care by leaps and bounds.
This isn’t as easy as it sounds. Intercommunication and information sharing gaps are a common challenge in the healthcare industry between payers, various practices/hospitals and even within departments. In the contemporary era, where modern technology promises to create a more connected future and free flow of information, bridging this gap to provide better delivery of care, remains the biggest challenge.
The task of integrating tons of data sources to their respective patient results is highly cumbersome for organizations and is often avoided, thus creating a blockade in healthcare innovation. For interoperability to be successful, providers and patients need to have easy access digitally to information, including health records, prescription & chemist’s data, medical billing records information, family history, clinic visits etc. Health tech leaders like Meditech, Cerner and InterSystems are working on developing tools that will enable provision of care to patients even outside the four walls of a clinic.
It is often misunderstood that EHRs were built to access patient information from any location and transfer to various providers whenever needed. In fact, they were designed as a substitute for the conventional system of paper-based records and to promote a more synchronized care delivery system within a practice. EHR vendors are falsely held responsible for not enough interoperability in the healthcare industry. Although EHR software are necessary to be running in parallel, they are only a portion of the interoperability system rather than being the sole solution. The entire healthcare technology contributes in small parts which will ultimately result in successfully accomplishing the goal of interoperability.
New care management models and tools need to be developed which will help utilize resources in a more efficient manner. A lot of times, clinical staff spends a huge portion of their day collecting patient information from other providers through fax and phone calls etc., trying to connect the dots of a disconnected care coordination system. All of these efforts could be spent elsewhere if the workflow becomes more automated and processes are streamlined.
In a nutshell, relying on EHR vendors to provide a solution to the already long overdue challenge of interoperability, will only delay it even more. All healthcare stakeholders need to deliberate on how they can play an active role to make the dream of interoperability become a reality.
