Question

8. Describe how medical information exchange and applied healthcare interoperability standards for healthcare record communications can increase efficiency of inter-departmental communications, between general practitioners and specialists, and between providers and regulatory agencies. Please provide references

Answer 1

Information and information exchange are crucial to the delivery of care on all levels of the health care delivery system—the patient, the care team, the health care organization, and the encompassing political-economic environment. To diagnose and treat individual patients effectively, individual care providers and care teams must have access to at least three major types of clinical information—the patient's health record, the rapidly changing medical-evidence base, and provider orders guiding the process of patient care. In addition, they need information on patient preferences and values and important administrative information, such as the status and availability of supporting resources . Many factors have contributed to the information/ communications technology deficit: (1) the atomistic structure of the industry (the prevalence of relatively undercapitalized small businesses/provider groups); (2) payment/reimbursement regimes and the lack of transparency in the market for health care services, both of which have discouraged private-sector investment in information/communications systems; (3) historical weaknesses in the managerial culture for health care; (4) cultural and organizational barriers related to the hierarchical nature and rigid division of labor in health professions; and (5) the relative technical/functional immaturity (until very recently) of available commercial clinical information/communications systems. The idea of transforming paper medical records into electronic medical records (EMRs) was first considered in the mid-1960s, when early prototype systems were developed. A number of large integrated health care provider organizations were early adopters of EMR systems.