News: Is your Health Information Exchange enough for cross-enterprise care coordination?

The focus of most Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) is on secure clinical messaging which, unfortunately at this time, is inadequate for cross-enterprise care coordination.

A recent Health Affairs study said that the most common functions of the 119 operational public HIEs were to transmit lab results, clinical summaries and discharge summaries. Moreover, while that paper said there had been a big increase in the number of HIEs capable of exchanging Continuity of Care Documents (CCDs) – a requirement of Meaningful Use stage 1 – few EHRs can yet integrate the data components of CCDs into their structured fields. The report emphasized the need for HIEs to provide cross-enterprise capabilities in these and other areas such as care planning, medication reconciliation, and referral management.

There’s still a big gap between what provider organizations need and what current HIEs can deliver. One way to overcome this hurdle is to integrate your HIE with a proven Resource Matching and intelligent eReferral solution system. The ability to deliver more targeted, meaningful, and patient-centered processes is then realized along with these features:

• Complete and comprehensive minimum data set filter that allows downstream service providers to make rapid effective transitions of care decisions, while preserving optimal patient privacy;
• Intuitive and seamless eReferral function WITHIN the physician and clinician workflow;
• Live patient and primary circle of care participation to support unique referral based on medical need and patient choice;
• Real time client matching to automated Resource/Service catalogs;
• Optimized and complete patient record specific to referral type;
• Real time communication/alerts/updates between a multidisciplinary team; and

Live analytics to drive daily decision support and strategic planning. As HIE continues to evolve, value-added Resource Matching and eReferral integration of systems such as Disease Management or Community Public Health, for example, reaps big benefits. With this integration, these systems become part of the HIE and help your HIE to reach stage 1 of meaningful use. Resource Matching and eReferral can then leverage the relevant information within the HIE to match patients to appropriate and available services and make the specific patient known to a program. Without Resource Matching and eReferral, the patient will not consistently be matched with the program that best meets his/her need and will not benefit from this professional collaboration of care.

When all members of a patient’s care team, no matter what location they are at, have the right patient medical information available at the right time and place they need it, then these professionals can provide better, timelier, and more cost-effective care, improving that patient’s experience and system economies simultaneously.

To learn more download: The Healthcare Executive’s Guide to Accelerating the Value of Health Information Exchanges with Resource Matching and Intelligent eReferral.