Prepare a reply post on the discussion below in the reply relate an experience or literature that adds to or illustrates the topic under discussion.
Mycah
Similar to the initial railroad systems in American history, health information exchange between systems is segmented, “electronic health information cannot cross from one system to the next” (HIMSS, 2022, p.1). A lack of standards at the foundational, structural, semantic, and organization levels creates a barrier between systems in exchanging health information.
The lack of interoperability between information systems contributes to the increased cost of health care, for example, duplicate or redundant labs and medical imaging. “One study found that the lack of healthcare data interoperability costs the U.S. health system over $30 billion a year” (Barth, 2021, p. 1). Lack of interoperability and standards contributes to clinician burnout; administrators and providers carry the burden of procuring patient information from many sources and interpreting the data with the understanding that the integrity of the data is possibly compromised and can impact patient safety.
Cassandra
Although health information exchange (HIE), both the data exchange itself and the organizations that facilitate this exchange, is still in its easily stages of development, a significant number of barriers have emerged that could potentially threaten HIE from getting off the ground, let alone sustaining its growth (Murphy, 2013). Data ownership is one barrier that is a problem for many IT professionals and much of healthcare. Our government is controlling our healthcare data needs. Security will be critical and personal control needs to remain personal so that health data cannot be used against patients as much as it will be used for them (Murphy, 2013). You would think that the logical solution to the problem of ownership would be giving patients control over their health information. Another barrier is patient control, the reality is that patient control necessitates active participation by these individuals who may or may not care about HIE. Another barrier would be sustainability, without a means of supporting its operations, the organizations facilitating HIE will not be able to begin searching for solutions to the above problems (Murphy, 2013). Getting information to move successfully between provider as well as state and federal agencies represents the top challenge to health information organizations (HIOs), Standards, interoperability (Murphy, 2013).
One I believe is vital and major setback is financial. For HIE to be implemented successfully, various components should be put in place; there is the technical part of the development that includes a qualified team to implement it; there is also the collection of data, which is a long and demanding process (Williams, Shah, Leider & Gupta, 2017). Additionally, there is a requirement for the facilities taking up the systems to invest heavily in the process. All these financial constraints involved in improving and applying the schemes as well as enhancing the procedures to be at par with the requirements have been a significant barrier in HIE.
Due to the heavy burden that the healthcare facilities must bear for them to embrace technology in their operations, the HIE program has been slowed down since most facilities cannot afford the systems (Williams, Shah, Leider & Gupta, 2017). Moreover, because all the regulations and requirements needed on the technical side of the systems, most facilities are opting to use the old system in as much as the HIE program promises better health care delivery. Furthermore, the incompatibility of the systems between facilities has led to incomplete records due to fragmented information. This incompatibility has resulted in the system being unusable.
