Question

The purpose of this assignment is to investigate solutions to challenges with interoperability in health care delivery environments. To complete the assignment, you will select a problem with interoperability you have witnessed in your current or past work environment, evaluate options for addressing the problem, and recommend a solution based on evidence.

Write a 750-1,000-word paper that addresses the following:

1. Describe the problem with the lack of interoperability witnessed in the health care delivery environment, as well as details about the scope of the problem, including who and what was affected and how.
2. Provide an analysis of the workflow and structure related to the problem to identify its root cause.
3. Recommend a potential solution to the problem and provide evidence from the literature demonstrating its successful implementation in other cases to support your recommendation.

Integrate three to five scholarly sources in your paper.

Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide

Answer 1

The problem with the lack of interoperability witnessed in the health care delivery environment are:

1.Developing a standardized way of identifying patients:

Matching the correct individual to his or her health data is critical to their medical care," statistics show that up to one in five patient records are not accurately matched even within the same health care system. As many as half of patients' records are mismatched when data is transferred between health care systems.

2.Enforcing health IT interoperability standards across care settings, facilities:

Lack of interoperability standards or poorly enforced standards can obstruct seamless health data exchange by complicating transactions and posing additional barriers to the flow of information.

3.Enforcing industry-wide interoperability measurement standards

Interoperability measurement standards often vary between stakeholders.

4.Coordinating stakeholders across the industry

Policies obstructing interoperability

5.Ending information blocking and data sharing impediments;

Information blocking is still a prevalent problem in health data exchange

Affected:

One of the most vexing parts of caring for patients is attempting to track their care through many previous hospital systems.

Unless a patient is both extremely vigilant about his or her medical care and higher health literate, the lack of a central repository of clinical information is an impediment to patient care in many ways. The multitude of electronic medical records (EMRs) makes it nearly impossible to provide efficient, timely, and considerate patient care.

How it affects:

1.Unnecessary duplicate testing

2.MIssing important clinical information

3.Still searching for solutions

ROOT CAUSE:

One key issue is that people receiving health care are mobile and travel getting their health care in different locations. For instance, a patient in the Military Healthcare system may receive care in numerous locations as they are deployed around the globe, at sea, and throughout our country. There are different health IT systems employed by different branches of the Military and within different locations. As active Military personnel moves through their careers they leave a trail of medical records. some of which are digital, some not. This creates the challenge of figuring out how to bring together their disconnected, and sometimes complex medical history to enable informed,evidence-based decision-making and optimal Healthcare. Once they transition to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), these same medical records are needed to determine possible disability rating ongoing benefits and lifelong Healthcare plans

After the transition from Active Duty service to veteran status, a veteran may receive care at numerous VA medical centers located around the country, each of which creates and contributes to yet another trail of medical records. This creates an untenable problem.

Solution:

The achievement of a fully interoperable healthcare system might seem like a daunting task but the following solutions can be adapted to achieve complete interoperability in healthcare.

Educating the providers:

One tactic to get healthcare providers to adopt interoperability is to educate and teach them how to use and integrate electronic health tools and their importance. Acquiring the required technical skills and knowledge will help the providers make full use of the health systems and recognize that implementing interoperable systems is in their best interest in terms of time and professional convenience.

Implementing strict privacy and security policies:

Adequate protection for the privacy of health and patient data should be considered as a part of the design of an interoperable healthcare system. Strict privacy and security policies should be implemented uniformly. Existing and upcoming regulations should be frequently reevaluated to consider emerging technologies and devices. Plus, patient and provider consent should be taken when accessing and disseminating patient data.

Adoption of messaging and terminology standards:

adoption of standards messaging and semantic terminology is essential as standardization format and language make health-related data understandable to the interoperable systems as wells as to the patients and providers.

Messaging standards such as Health level seven(HL7) and digital imaging and communications in medicine (DICOM) and terminology standards like ICD-10-AM and LOINC, SNOMED are already there to enable the effective and accurate sharing of information.

Using low-cost interfaces:

The ability of providers to use eHealth tools successfully depends on the user interface the integrated system provides. Data displayed in a disordered and illogical manner can confuse the providers leading to decrease performance and medical errors which affect both, the health outcomes and cost.

Using low-cost interfaces like Mirth connects and open APIs such as HL7 FAst Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) can solve the usability and cost issue as they distinctly define security mandates and transmission protocols which lower the risk of errors and also have real-time ability to share and access data.