Health Information Exchange (HIE)

Thirty-five percent more people than last year have enrolled for their employer-sponsored healthcare benefits on private online marketplaces, according to a new report from global consulting and technology firm Accenture.

Linking its emergency medical service teams with Colorado's state health information exchange has made a big difference in how first responders are able to assess, treat and sometimes follow up with patients, according to Richard Lewis, EMS bureau chief of the Denver-area South Metro Fire Rescue Authority.

Health Level 7 and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT kicked off a new challenge that aims to alleviate provider frustrations with the usability of HL7's consolidated clinical document architecture standard. 

Brian Yeaman, MD, founder and president of Norman, Oklahoma-based Yeaman and Associates and Yeaman Signature Health Clinic has been named the recipient of the 2015 HIMSS Physician IT Leadership Award for his work in meaningful use and health information exchange. Yeaman previously served as chief medical information officer at Norman Regional Health System for 10 years, where he guided both inpatient and outpatient EHR implementations and Stage 1 and 2 meaningful use attestation. Watch the full video. Yeaman is also a leader in health information exchange. As chief administrative officer for Coordinated Care Oklahoma, his service area includes about 4 million patients with data received from facilities in five states. HIMSS called it “a model for sustainable HIE conducted under private funding and governance.” "I'm thankful for the opportunity to practice medicine as well as serve on the front lines of defining a new healthcare,” Yeaman said in a statement. “I feel that we are still early in our journey of realizing the potential we have to improve care delivery with interoperability and health IT across the board.” Yeaman will be honored at the HIMSS16 Awards Gala on, Thursday, March 3 at the 2016 HIMSS Conference & Exhibition. Learn more about HIMSS16 and the Physicians' IT Symposium. Twitter: @MikeMiliardHITN

A staggering 73 percent of health information management professionals work on mitigating duplicates at least weekly at their organizations, according to a recent AHIMA survey. The survey confirmed the importance of information governance policies within an organization to address accurate matching patient information needs. The results also indicated the importance of quality assurance initiatives to improve care quality. “Accurately matching the right information with the right patient is crucial to reducing potential patient safety risks,” said AHIMA CEO Lynne Thomas Gordon, in a statement. “At the very foundation of patient care is the ability to accurately match a patient with his or her health information.” AHIMA surveyed 815 members using 12 different EHRs and assessed their experience with patient matching and linking patient records. Less than half of respondents said there's a quality assurance step during the registration or post-registration process. There's also a lack of resources to adequately correct duplicate records. [Also: AHIMA takes on patient identifier] Forty-three percent of respondents said they measure data quality in relationship to patient matching, while less than half have a quality assurance step in the registration or post-registration process. Although  55 percent of respondents had communication policies for duplicate patient records, there is  a lack of standardization in regards to how the rate of duplicates are calculated. And less than half of respondents understood how duplicate rates were factored in their organization. “Reliable and accurate calculation of the duplicate rate is foundational to developing trusted data, reducing potential patient safety risks and measuring return on investments for strategic healthcare initiatives,” the survey authors said. Fifty-seven percent of respondents work possible duplicates regularly, while most respondents said data integrity issues require consistent management and timely cleanup. Patient matching initiatives are crucial for the success of patient-centric care, health information exchange, population health, analytics and financial goals, the report said. Respondents reported five major daily challenges with master patient index or enterprise master patient index management: registration staff turnover; record matching/patient search terminology and or algorithms; a lack of resources to fix duplicates; and inadequate governance, policy or support. [Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook] “We cannot sit around and wait for others to correct this problem,” the survey authors said. “Improving patient matching efforts is a challenge we can meet,” Gordon said. “The healthcare community must come together to embrace it so that accurate patient information is available when and where it is needed.” The authors said the survey was a critical step in future patient matching planning and collaboration with healthcare experts to develop solutions. AHIMA plans to use data from the survey to shape future advocacy efforts. Twitter: @JessiefDavis

Congress on Wednesday will consider legislation to allow physicians working in ambulatory surgical centers to receive the same payment incentives for meaningful use of electronic health records as doctors in other settings.

The constant for 2016 will be a rise in patient engagement in HIEs, along with a drastic increase in security measures to prevent breaches, as the healthcare industry moves toward a more patient-centered mission.

Scripps Health will deploy a clinical network from Health Gorilla to enable HIPAA-compliant access to imaging and lab data from its facilities for community physicians and their patients.

Putting population health into practice has been challenging for many institutions, as all data is based on 'basic determinants.' Success will be based on new technologies, like genomic and real-time data, as institutions move toward community-based models.

Carequality, a public-private collaborative working as part of the Sequoia Project (formerly known as Healtheway) to drive more efficient data exchange, has launched an interoperability framework it says will be useful to a diverse array stakeholders.