Question

As an HIM professional, you have been asked to take part in an open community forum regarding health information exchanges (HIEs). You are anticipating that there will be questions about the challenges that face HIE adoption. Prepare for these questions by identifying at least three HIE challenges.

Answer 1

The three common challenges are

1) Interoperability- Connecting multiple systems is difficult and expensive. To combat these issues, the surveyed organizations expressed a desire to see more standardized pricing and integration solutions from vendors, more technology platforms capable of "plug and play" functionality and more of a consensus among providers for standards for data vocabulary and transport.

2) Financial stability- HIEs have generally become more financially stable over the past two years. 49 organizations currently receive more than half of their funding from public sources, including the federal government. Of these, 17 expect public funding to continue to constitute the majority of their income. Many realize a reliance on public funding leaves them in a precarious state as the influx of funds following the passage of healthcare reform and the HITECH Act is tapering off, and are working to institute a fee-for-service payment model.

3) Competitive concerns- "Hospitals are currently walking a fine line — it makes sense to let other hospitals have access to patient data to coordinate patient care.At the same time, hospitals don’t want their competitors using their data to take business away.