Public Health Agencies Struggle To Integrate With HIEs

New research by ONC suggests that while public health agencies might benefit from connecting with HIEs, there are still some significant barriers many need to address before doing so. Public health agencies at both the state and local level collect information from providers as part of conducting disease surveillance activities and maintaining data registries. Though some of these registries are common – notably those focusing on childhood immunizations, birth defects and cancer—the agencies’ technical infrastructure and data formats still vary. This makes sharing data between them difficult. One alternative to cumbersome data matching between agencies is for the agencies to integrate with an HIE. According to the ONC report, public health researchers have begun to find that at least some of the time, the data they get from HIE organizations is richer than data from clinical systems. Not only that, when public health agencies integrate their information systems with HIEs, it can help them conduct many of their functions more effectively. However, it’s still unusual to find HIE-connected agencies as of yet. In its new report, ONC outlines what it learned about what the agencies hoped to accomplish with HIE integration and how they moved ahead with integration. To find this out, ONC contracted with Clinovations Government + Health, which participated in discussions with eight entities and analyzing more detailed information on 10 others. Virtually all respondents ha...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - Category: Information Technology Authors: Tags: EHR Electronic Health Record Electronic Medical Record EMR Healthcare Healthcare Interoperability Healthcare Leadership HIE Meaningful Use Clinovations HIE Integration Medicaid Incentives Medicare Incentnives ONC Public Health Source Type: blogs