Hospitals Obstructing Medical Record Exchange; Here Are the Reasons Why

I recently came across an article byBruce Fryer discussing the problems he encountered when a relative of his was hospitalized atSt. Josephs Hospital in Atlanta which is part of Emory Healthcare. He was trying to get access to the patient's electronic records in a hospital across the street and was encountering an interoperability problem, a topic that I have blogged about repeatedly (see, for example:NYT Op-Ed on EHR Interoperability Blames Vendors and Greedy Hospitals;Integration and Interoperability Are Essential for Growth of Digital Pathology; Hospitals Need to Pressure Their EHR Vendors to Improve Software Functionality). Here is the link to an article by him (see:How Hospital Administrators Are Obstructing Medical Record Exchange APIs) and below is an excerpt from it:A survey of 60 Healthcare Information Exchange leaders was done by the University of Michigan Schools of Information and Public Health in March 2017 on information blocking (see:Information Blocking: Is It Occurring and What Policy Strategies Can Address It?).22% responded that hospitals/health systems routinely or often control patient flow by selectively sharing patient information and 42% reported that vendors routinely or often make third-party access to standardized data difficult. Why would hospitals/health systems do this? It ’s a combination of multiple factors.Revenue is a factor. The reason that patient portals are available is driven by reimbursement dollars from the fede...
Source: Lab Soft News - Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Tags: Electronic Health Record (EHR) Healthcare Business Healthcare Information Technology Hospital Executive Management Medical Ethics Source Type: blogs