Question

In what ways does patient data exchange present problems for healthcare providers? Do you think EHR vendors have purposely allowed some of the difficulties for their own financial benefit?

Answer 1

The some of the ways in which data exchange can present problems for healthcare providers are:

• The data security can be at risk. The patient data is very sensitive and sharing the data can result in an accidental leakage leading to a negative impact on the lives of the people.
• The data sharing also requires the healthcare providers to follow data standards in order to maintain data integrity. Not following them will put the organization at risk.
• The privacy rules vary from one state to the other so the organization will find it difficult to cope with the requirement when they think of data sharing.
• The organization will also have to invest a lot of money and resources in order to make sure that they have a stable process in place to meet the required standards.

To some extent, we can say that the EHR vendors have purposely allowed some of the difficulties for their own financial benefit. The organizations will depend on the EHR vendors when they face severe problems and if they solve all the problem then the demand for them will go down. The organizations will face different types of problems and the EHR vendors do not try to solve all these problems. Doing that will reduce their business opportunities and this is followed in many other industries as well.