Jeffrey Sullivan

May 1, 2024, Updated on May 3, 2024

So much depends on the ability to access meaningful information about patients at the point of referral, admission, and care – from the ease with which clinicians can pinpoint patients’ needs to clinicians’ impact on quality of care, access to care and health outcomes. 

“If you are engaged in the digital ecosystem and you create or generate health data, you also have an obligation to make sure that it is accessible outside of your organizational four walls,” Angie Bass, chief strategy officer, Michigan Health Information Network Shared Services (MiHIN), shared during ViVE.

Yet access to data doesn’t always equal access to information, or the insight needed to improve health. In fact, challenges related to information exchange are common across healthcare’s “digital have-nots”—organizations that weren’t eligible for EHR implementation incentives, like post-acute facilities, skilled nursing, home health, substance use disorder clinics and assisted living facilities. 

These providers need pragmatic solutions that leverage existing technologies to strengthen electronic information exchange. But there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Finding the right solution depends on a careful assessment of an organization’s needs.

Barriers To Health Information Exchange 

Data interoperability is critical to continuity of care and the ability to identify and respond to patients’ whole-person needs. Yet too often, facilities don’t have access to the data they need when it is needed most. When data is available, it is often lower-quality, paper-based (e.g., faxed, scanned, hand-written) and requires significant manual intervention to process – often retype – and get to the right place. Ultimately, these challenges affect access to care, care quality, health outcomes, and health equity.