NCHS Data Brief on Electronic Health Records and Electronic Information Sharing: Sharing Information with External Providers

There is an interesting paper on the state of Electronic Health Records and Electronic Information Sharing in the United States published in January 2016 by Jawoom and colleagues.

In their data, the authors ask respondents whether their information is shared electronically with external providers/unaffiliated hospitals.

The figures ranged from 17.7% in New Jersey to 58.8 in North Dakota. The figures from North Dakota suggest that this state may be a leader in the sharing of health information electronically. Although North Dakota wasn’t the state with the highest percentage of respondents reporting that they were using a certified Electronic Health Record, it was close at 81.2%.

This initial data suggests that North Dakota may be an exemplar of electronic sharing of health information sharing and it would be interesting to see the results of further studies in this area.

Context

Patient Records

Patient records are central to the delivery of healthcare and serve a number of functions including the recording of clinical assessments and interventions. Aggregated data is also utilised at a local and national level to inform commissioning.

Electronic Patient Records

The digitisation of patient records offers a number of advantages over paper based records. These advantages include automated backup of records, reduced use of physical storage space (since paper based notes are switched to servers), off-site access to records using mobile devices and the potential to develop analytical clinical support tools which use computers to process clinical data to help improve clinical decisions. Not all healthcare services have electronic patient records but most providers are moving in this direction.

Getting Electronic Patient Records to Talk to Each Other

When patients move between healthcare providers – for instance between primary care and the hospital – they may find that one provider does not have information that the other provider has. There are many providers and many electronic paper record systems. For two systems to talk to each other they have to solve a number of problems. When these problems are solved a patient can move between providers and healthcare information can be accessed by the different providers. A key solution to this problem of health information gaps is the Health Information Exchange (HIE).

The Health Information Exchange

There are many definitions of what a Health Information Exchange is. (Hersh et al, 2015) define a HIE as follows:

‘Health information exchange (HIE), the electronic sharing of clinical information across the boundaries of health care organizations’

Whilst this definition is simple, the process of sharing clinical information between healthcare organisations is technically complex and encompasses a range of software, hardware and governance issues. The process of helping systems to talk to each other is helped by the development of standards. A set of standards is outlined in the NHS interoperability framework.

Links to Other Posts in the Health Information Exchange Series

General Posts to Date on Health Information Exchanges

Posts on Examples of Health Information Exchanges

SNOMED CT®/ICD Mapping and Harmonisation Posts

SNOMED CT® Posts

ICD 1-10 Posts

ICD-11 Posts

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