Meaningful Use & Healthcare Interoperability: Key Ehr Challenges

By Author: Amar C
Total Articles: 1
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With MU2 laying greater focus on electronic transmission of EHR data and sharing care summaries with patients, EHR vendors need to respond quickly to the increasing healthcare interoperability needs of the industry. However, with less than six months before MU2 attestation gets underway, vendors and providers alike are hard pressed to develop, test and deploy a variety of new features for effective, standards-based information exchange. Vendors also need to keep in mind that successful MU2 compliance depends on a number of external factors that they would also need to address.

Addressing the Legacy Challenge
Legacy technology environments, in a sizeable number of provider settings, often have siloed data sources and invariably use multiple incompatible standards. The sheer complexity of applications, speciality areas and data structures makes standardization and integration a slow and difficult process. The diverse healthcare standards (Direct, HISP, eHealthExchange) and information sharing protocols (CCD / CCDA) that are currently in use also add to the complexity.

Making Data Security Consistent Across ...
... Applications &Health Settings
For MU2 requirements such as making patient specific education resources available online and sharing lab test results, providers face a multitude of data security challenges including PHI and HIPAA compliance. Movement of patient data across interoperable systems can potentially affect the confidentiality and security of PHI. It becomes imperative for connected systems, both internal and external, to adopt consistent standards for data encryption, identity management and secure messaging.

Connecting with HIEs for Public Health Reporting
EHRs need to integrate with multiple external sources – payers, HIEs, immunization registries etc. – to share data with federal, state and local agencies.The problem becomes more pronounced for healthcare settings that have diverse, disintegrated clinical and financial systems, HIE integration becomes more challenging. The complexity arises from the need to aggregate, standardize and transmit information from multiple systems using custom built, standards-based adapters.

Focusing on Patient Adoption for MU2 Success
MU2 readiness has a large dependency on patient awareness and adoption of new technology features, e.g., patient educational resources available online or patient portals to view or download information. Providers need to focus on maximizing patient adoption through regular reminders and alerts, in addition to the use of alternate channels like social media to engage with patients. EHR vendors, on the other hand, need to provide simple, easy to use interfaces to their applications, and make data available across multiple channels, including smartphones and tablet PCs.

The above challenges, while not being new to the industry, are much more relevant today in the context of emerging regulatory requirements like Meaningful Use and Accountable Care. While the area of healthcare interoperability provides significant potential to help organizations meet many Meaningful Use objectives, providers and health IT vendors must recognize the significant challenges involved.Addressing most of these challenges would be a fairly long-term proposition, needing deep engagement and long-term partnerships between providers, EHR companies and healthcare technology vendors.

As the Senior Manager, Strategic Partnerships at CitiusTech, Amar works with leading healthcare organizations to build global technology partnerships for CitiusTech’s solutions and services. His focus areas include aiding processes in building best practices to generate business value and develop long-term relationships with healthcare technology organizations.