It’s been said that in healthcare, we make monumental changes at a glacial pace. According to an ONC report released this week, acute care hospitals have once again made an increase in their interoperability status versus last year. This nets out to a 2% increase in the number of hospitals that can receive patient summary of care records from other institutions, an increase of 6% for finding such records outside their health system and a whopping 12% increase in those who can integrate outside patient records into their own EHR. All told, however, only 41% of US non-federal acute care hospitals can send, receive, locate and integrate outside information – a number far too low to rush to high fives all around.
While the improvements are notable, there is still much work to do. Far too many hospitals have anemic data exchange policies and capabilities and nearly half have their EHR silo unable to show a complete patient record that includes outside care data. While we wish patients would remain within a single health system, geography, capabilities, and even travel schedules means this is often not the case.
Are you part of a hospital or health system who wants to improve your interoperability capabilities? Let Strategic Interests know. We would love to help design a suite of programs to help you achieve all the benefits an interoperable system provides.
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