Healthcare IT News reports that Healthcare organizations have been facing similar difficulties. Hospital CIOs find that EHR integration into existing systems is more difficult than initially perceived, even after costly investments into the software. Just as you find duplicates of the same contact with different information in your address books, hospitals find that EHRs for patients do not always match existing files.
This interoperability problem could lead to legal issues for these organizations in the future. Under the Affordable Care Act, hospitals with 'meaningful use' EHRs will receive financial incentive payments until 2015. After that, hospitals without these EHRs will face small financial penalties. It is in hospital management's best interest to sync EHRs with current software in order to receive current incentives and avoid future penalties.
An article from the Healthcare IT Guy website offers some interesting solutions to this EHR fragmentation problem. Persistent Links are the most interesting option. Persistent links identify and match patients by issuing unique identifications to each one. The technology eliminates the fragmentation issue by working across several different hospital databases.
I am not a healthcare technology expert, but these problems and solutions are quite interesting. Hospital management must effecitvely navigate through politics and fast-paced technological change while maintaining the quality of patient care. Proposed solutions will require large investments and managers must be prepared to weigh their benefits.
See original articles:
Healthcare IT News: Interoperability Still a Barrier
Healthcare IT Guy: Techniques for Matching Patient Records
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