Gaps in health information exchange between hospitals that treat many shared patients

Recent Advances and Future Directions in Syncope Management: A Comprehensive Narrative Review

Syncope is a highly prevalent clinical condition characterized by a rapid, complete, and brief loss of consciousness, followed by full recovery caused by cerebral hypoperfusion. This symptom carries significance, as its potential underlying causes may involve the heart, blood pressure, or brain, leading to a spectrum of consequences, from sudden death to compromised quality of life. Various factors contribute to syncope, and adhering to a precise diagnostic pathway can enhance diagnostic accuracy and treatment effectiveness. A standardized initial assessment, risk stratification, and appropriate test identification facilitate determining the underlying cause in the majority of cases. New technologies, including artificial intelligence and smart devices, may have the potential to reshape syncope management into a proactive, personalized, and data-centric model, ultimately enhancing patient outcomes and quality of life. This review addresses key aspects of syncope management, including pathogenesis, current diagnostic testing options, treatments, and considerations in the geriatric population.

Promoting TEFCA with Blockchain Technology: A Decentralized Approach to Patient-centered Healthcare Data Management

The Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA) is a framework consisting of seven principles designed to create a secure and seamless health information exchange system across various healthcare settings. The ultimate goal of TEFCA is to facilitate public health surveillance, increase interoperability, promote data sharing, and ensure patient-centered healthcare data management. While the implementation of these principles is challenging, blockchain technology, with its unique features such as transparency, auditability, immutability, and anonymity, can provide a promising solution to the development of TEFCA. This article delves into the potential of blockchain technology to promote TEFCA design. By providing an immutable and transparent ledger, blockchain ensures data integrity, openness, and patient privacy. Overall, the use of blockchain technology can help address the challenges of implementing TEFCA principles and promote patient empowerment and control over their health data, improve data interoperability, and enhance healthcare quality.

Successes and Barriers of Health Information Exchange Participation Across Hospitals in South Carolina From 2014 to 2020: Longitudinal Observational Study

BACKGROUND

The 2009 Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act sets three stages of Meaningful Use requirements for the electronic health records incentive program. Health information exchange (HIE) technologies are critical in the meaningful use of electronic health records to support patient care coordination. However, HIE use trends and barriers remain unclear across hospitals in South Carolina (SC), a state with the earliest HIE implementation.

OBJECTIVE

This study aims to explore changes in the proportion of HIE participation and factors associated with HIE participation, and barriers to exchange and interoperability across SC hospitals.

METHODS

This study derived data from a longitudinal data set of the 2014-2020 American Hospital Association Information Technology Supplement for 69 SC hospitals. The primary outcome was whether a hospital participated in HIE in a year. A cross-sectional multivariable logistic regression model, clustered at the hospital level and weighted by bed size, was used to identify factors associated with HIE participation. The second outcome was barriers to sending, receiving, or finding patient health information to or from other organizations or hospital systems. The frequency of hospitals reporting each barrier related to exchange and interoperability were then calculated.

RESULTS

Hospitals in SC have been increasingly participating in HIE, improving from 43% (24/56) in 2014 to 82% (54/66) in 2020. After controlling for other hospital factors, teaching hospitals (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] 3.7, 95% CI 1.0-13.3), system-affiliated hospitals (AOR 6.6, 95% CI 3.2-13.7), and rural referral hospitals (AOR 8.0, 95% CI 1.2-53.4) had higher odds to participate in HIE than their counterparts, whereas critical access hospitals (AOR 0.1, 95% CI 0.02-0.6) were less likely to participate in HIE than their counterparts reimbursed by the prospective payment system. Hospitals with greater ratios of Medicare or Medicaid inpatient days to total inpatient days also reported higher odds of HIE participation. Despite the majority of hospitals reporting HIE participation in 2020, barriers to exchange and interoperability remained, including lack of provider contacts (27/40, 68%), difficulty in finding patient health information (27/40, 68%), adapting different vendor platforms (26/40, 65%), difficulty matching or identifying same patients between systems (23/40, 58%), and providers that do not typically exchange patient data (23/40, 58%).

CONCLUSIONS

HIE participation has been widely adopted in SC hospitals. Our findings highlight the need to incentivize optimization of HIE and seamless information exchange by facilitating and implementing standardization of health information across various HIE systems and by addressing other technical issues, including providing providers' addresses and training HIE stakeholders to find relevant information. Policies and efforts should include more collaboration with vendors to reduce platform compatibility issues and more user engagement and technical training and support to facilitate effective, accurate, and efficient exchange of provider contacts and patient health information.

Jumping Through Hoops: Community Care Clinician and Staff Experiences Providing Primary Care to Rural Veterans

BACKGROUND

The 2019 VA Maintaining Systems and Strengthening Integrated Outside Networks Act, or MISSION Act, aimed to improve rural veteran access to care by expanding coverage for services in the community. Increased access to clinicians outside the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) could benefit rural veterans, who often face obstacles obtaining VA care. This solution, however, relies on clinics willing to navigate VA administrative processes.

OBJECTIVE

To investigate the experiences rural, non-VA clinicians and staff have while providing care to rural veterans and inform challenges and opportunities for high-quality, equitable care access and delivery.

DESIGN

Phenomenological qualitative study.

PARTICIPANTS

Non-VA-affiliated primary care clinicians and staff in the Pacific Northwest.

APPROACH

Semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of eligible clinicians and staff between May and August 2020; data analyzed using thematic analysis.

KEY RESULTS

We interviewed 13 clinicians and staff and identified four themes and multiple challenges related to providing care for rural veterans: (1) Confusion, variability and delays for VA administrative processes, (2) clarifying responsibility for dual-user veteran care, (3) accessing and sharing medical records outside the VA, and (4) negotiating communication pathways between systems and clinicians. Informants reported using workarounds to combat challenges, including using trial and error to gain expertise in VA system navigation, relying on veterans to act as intermediaries to coordinate their care, and depending on individual VA employees to support provider-to-provider communication and share system knowledge. Informants expressed concerns that dual-user veterans were more likely to have duplication or gaps in services.

CONCLUSIONS

Findings highlight the need to reduce the bureaucratic burden of interacting with the VA. Further work is needed to tailor structures to address challenges rural community providers experience and to identify strategies to reduce care fragmentation across VA and non-VA providers and encourage long-term commitment to care for veterans.

Ambulance use and subsequent fragmented hospital readmission among older adults

BACKGROUND

Interhospital care fragmentation, when a patient is readmitted to a different hospital than they were originally discharged from, occurs in 20%-25% of readmissions. Mode of transport to the hospital, specifically ambulance use, may be a risk factor for fragmented readmissions. Our study seeks to further understand the relationship between ambulance transport and fragmented readmissions in older adults, a population that is at increased risk for poor outcomes following fragmented readmissions.

METHODS

We analyzed inpatient claims from Medicare beneficiaries in 2018 who had a hospital admission for select Hospital Readmission Reduction Program Conditions (acute myocardial infarction, congestive heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, pneumonia) as well as dehydration, syncope, urinary tract infection, or behavioral issues. We evaluated the associations between ambulance transport and a fragmented readmission using logistic regression models adjusted for demographic, clinical, and hospital characteristics.

RESULTS

The study included 1,186,600 30-day readmissions. Of these, 46.8% (n = 555,847) required ambulance transport. In fully adjusted models, taking an ambulance to the readmission hospital increased the odds of a fragmented readmission by 38% (95% CI 1.32, 1.44). When this association was examined by readmission major diagnostic category (MDC), the strongest associations were seen for Factors Influencing Health Status and Other Contacts with Health Services (i.e., rehabilitation, aftercare) (AOR 3.66, 95% CI 3.11, 4.32), Mental Diseases and Disorders (AOR 2.69, 95% CI 2.44, 2.97), and Multiple Significant Trauma (AOR 2.61, 95% CI 1.56, 4.35). When the model was stratified by patient origin, ambulance use remained associated with fragmented readmissions across all locations.

CONCLUSIONS

Ambulance use is associated with increased odds of a fragmented readmission, though the strength of the association varies by readmission diagnosis and origin. Patient-, hospital-, and system-level interventions should be developed, implemented, and evaluated to address this modifiable risk factor.

Barriers and Opportunities for the Use of Digital Tools in Medicines Optimization Across the Interfaces of Care: Stakeholder Interviews in the United Kingdom

BACKGROUND

People with long-term conditions frequently transition between care settings that require information about a patient's medicines to be transferred or translated between systems. This process is currently error prone and associated with unintentional changes to medications and miscommunication, which can lead to serious patient consequences. One study estimated that approximately 250,000 serious medication errors occur in England when a patient transitions from hospital to home. Digital tools can equip health care professionals with the right information at the right time and place to support practice.

OBJECTIVE

This study aimed to answer the following questions: what systems are being used to transfer information across interfaces of care within a region of England? and what are the challenges and potential opportunities for more effective cross-sector working to support medicines optimization?

METHODS

A team of researchers at Newcastle University conducted a qualitative study by performing in-depth semistructured interviews with 23 key stakeholders in medicines optimization and IT between January and March 2022. The interviews lasted for approximately 1 hour. The interviews and field notes were transcribed and analyzed using the framework approach. The themes were discussed, refined, and applied systematically to the data set. Member checking was also performed.

RESULTS

This study revealed themes and subthemes pertaining to 3 key areas: transfer of care issues, challenges of digital tools, and future hopes and opportunities. We identified a major complexity in terms of the number of different medicine management systems used throughout the region. There were also important challenges owing to incomplete patient records. We also highlighted the barriers related to using multiple systems and their subsequent impact on user workflow, a lack of interoperability between systems, gaps in the availability of digital data, and poor IT and change management. Finally, participants described their hopes and opportunities for the future provision of medicines optimization services, and there was a clear need for a patient-centered consolidated integrated health record for use by all health and care professionals across different sectors, bridging those working in primary, secondary, and social care.

CONCLUSIONS

The effectiveness and utility of shared records depend on the data within; therefore, health care and digital leaders must support and strongly encourage the adoption of established and approved digital information standards. Specific priorities regarding understanding of the vision for pharmacy services and supporting this with appropriate funding arrangements and strategic planning of the workforce were also described. In addition, the following were identified as key enablers to harness the benefits of digital tools to support future medicines optimization: development of minimal system requirements; enhanced IT system management to reduce unnecessary repetition; and importantly, meaningful and continued collaboration with clinical and IT stakeholders to optimize systems and share good practices across care sectors.

Association of distance between hospitals and volume of shared admissions

Background

To assess whether decreasing distance between hospitals was associated with the number of shared patients (patients with an admission to one hospital and a readmission to another).

Methods

Data were from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project’s State Inpatient Databases (Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Utah [2017], New York, Vermont [2016]) and the American Hospital Association Annual Survey (2016 & 2017). This was a cross-sectional analysis of patients who had an index admission and subsequent readmission at different hospitals within the same year. We used unadjusted and adjusted linear regression to evaluate the association between the number of shared patients and the distance between admission-readmission hospital pairs.

Results

There were 691 hospitals in the sample (247 in Florida, 151 in Georgia, 50 in Maryland, 172 in New York, 58 in Utah, and 13 in Vermont), accounting for a total of 596,772 admission-readmission pairs. 32.6% of the admission-readmission pairs were shared between two hospitals. On average, a one-mile decrease in distance between two hospitals was associated with of 3.05 (95% CI, 3.02, 3.07) more shared admissions. However, variability between states was wide, with Utah having 0.37 (95% CI 0.35, 0.39) more shared admissions between hospitals per one-mile shorter distance, and Maryland having 4.98 (95% CI 4.87, 5.08) more.

Conclusions

We found that proximity between hospitals is associated with higher volumes of shared admissions.

Transforming Health Data to Actionable Information: Recent Progress and Future Opportunities in Health Information Exchange

OBJECTIVES

Provide a systematic review of literature pertaining to health information exchange (HIE) since 2018. Summarize HIE-associated literature for most frequently occurring topics, as well as within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and health equity. Finally, provide recommendations for how HIE can advance the vision of a digital healthcare ecosystem.

METHODS

A computer program was developed to mediate a literature search of primary literature indexed in MEDLINE that was: (1) indexed with "Health Information Exchange" MeSH descriptor as a major topic; and (2) published between January 2018 and December 2021. Frequency of MeSH descriptors was then used to identify and to rank topics associated with the retrieved literature. COVID-19 literature was identified using the general COVID-19 PubMed Clinical Query filter. Health equity literature was identified using additional MeSH descriptor-based searches. The retrieved literature was then reviewed and summarized.

RESULTS

A total of 256 articles were retrieved and reviewed for this survey. The major thematic areas summarized were: (1) Information Dissemination; (2) Delivery of Health Care; (3) Hospitals; (4) Hospital Emergency Service; (5) COVID-19; (6) Health Disparities; and (7) Computer Security and Confidentiality. A common theme across all areas examined for this survey was the maturity of HIE to support data-driven healthcare delivery. Recommendations were developed based on opportunities identified across the reviewed literature.

CONCLUSIONS

HIE is an essential advance in next generation healthcare delivery. The review of the recent literature (2018-2021) indicates that successful HIE improves healthcare delivery, often resulting in improved health outcomes. There remain major opportunities for expanded use of HIE, including the active engagement of clinical and patient stakeholders. The maturity of HIE reflects the maturity of the biomedical informatics and health data science fields.

Electronic Connectivity Among US Hospitals Treating Shared Patients

BACKGROUND

Increasing electronic health information exchange (HIE) between provider organizations is a top policy priority that has been pursued by establishing varied types of networks.

OBJECTIVES

To measure electronic connectivity enabled by these networks, including community, electronic health record vendor, and national HIE networks, across US hospitals weighted by the volume of shared patients and identify characteristics that predict connectivity.

RESEARCH DESIGN

Cross-sectional analysis of 1721 hospitals comprising 16,344 hospital pairs and 6,492,232 shared patients from 2018 CareSet Labs HOP data and national hospital surveys.

SUBJECTS

Pairs of US acute care hospitals that delivered care to 11 or more of the same fee-for-service Medicare beneficiaries in 2018.

MEASURES

Whether a patient was treated by a pair of hospitals connected through participation in the same HIE network ("connected hospitals") or not connected because the hospitals participated in different networks, only 1 participated, or both did not participate.

RESULTS

Sixty-four percent of shared patients were treated by connected hospitals. Of the remaining shared patients, 14% were treated by hospital pairs that participated in different HIE networks, 21% by pairs in which only 1 hospital participated in an HIE network, and 2% by pairs in which neither participated. Patients treated by pairs with at least 1 for-profit hospital, and by pairs located in competitive markets, were less likely to be treated by connected hospitals.

CONCLUSIONS

While the majority of shared patients received care from connected hospitals, remaining gaps could be filled by connecting HIE networks to each other and by incentivizing certain types of hospitals that may not participate because of competitive concerns.

Information blocking remains prevalent at the start of 21st Century Cures Act: results from a survey of health information exchange organizations

OBJECTIVE

Recent policy making aims to prevent health systems, lectronic health record (EHR) vendors, and others from blocking the electronic sharing of patient data necessary for clinical care. We sought to assess the prevalence of information blocking prior to enforcement of these rules.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

We conducted a national survey of health information exchange organizations (HIEs) to measure the prevalence of information blocking behaviors observed by these third-party entities. Eighty-nine of 106 HIEs (84%) meeting the inclusion criteria responded.

RESULTS

The majority (55%) of HIEs reported that EHR vendors at least sometimes engage in information blocking, while 30% of HIEs reported the same for health systems. The most common type of information blocking behavior EHR vendors engaged in was setting unreasonably high prices, which 42% of HIEs reported routinely observing. The most common type of information blocking behavior health systems engaged in was refusing to share information, which 14% of HIEs reported routinely observing. Reported levels of vendor information blocking was correlated with regional competition among vendors and information blocking was concentrated in some geographic regions.

DISCUSSION

Our findings are consistent with early reports, revealing persistently high levels of information blocking and important variation by actor, type of behavior, and geography. These trends reflect the observations and experiences of HIEs and their potential biases. Nevertheless, these data serve as a baseline against which to measure the impact of new regulations and to inform policy makers about the most common types of information blocking behaviors.

CONCLUSION

Enforcement aimed at reducing information blocking should consider variation in prevalence and how to most effectively target efforts.

Electronic Health Records, Interoperability and Patient Safety in Health Systems of High-income Countries: A Systematic Review Protocol

INTRODUCTION

The availability and routine use of electronic health records (EHRs) have become commonplace in healthcare systems of many high-income countries. While there is an ever-growing body of literature pertaining to their use, evidence surrounding the importance of EHR interoperability and its impact on patient safety remains less clear. There is, therefore, a need and opportunity to evaluate the evidence available regarding this relationship so as to better inform health informatics development and policies in the years to come. This systematic review aims to evaluate the impact of EHR interoperability on patient safety in health systems of high-income countries.

METHODS AND ANALYSIS

A systematic literature review will be conducted via a computerised search through four databases: PubMed, Embase, Health Management Information Consortium and PsycInfo for relevant articles published between 2010 and 2020. Outcomes of interest will include impact on patient safety and the broader effects on health systems. Quality of the randomised quantitative studies will be assessed using Cochrane Risk of Bias Tool. Non-randomised papers will be evaluated with the Risk of Bias In Non-Randomised Studies-of Interventions tool. Drummond's Checklist will be used for publications pertaining to economic evaluation. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence quality appraisal checklist will be used to assess qualitative studies. A narrative synthesis will be conducted for included studies, and the body of evidence will be summarised in a summary of findings table.

ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION

This review will summarise published studies with non-identifiable data and, thus, does not require ethical approval. Findings will be disseminated through preprints, open access peer-reviewed publications, and conference presentations.

PROSPERO REGISTRATION NUMBER

CRD42020209285.

Clinical data sharing improves quality measurement and patient safety

OBJECTIVE

Accurate and robust quality measurement is critical to the future of value-based care. Having incomplete information when calculating quality measures can cause inaccuracies in reported patient outcomes. This research examines how quality calculations vary when using data from an individual electronic health record (EHR) and longitudinal data from a health information exchange (HIE) operating as a multisource registry for quality measurement.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Data were sampled from 53 healthcare organizations in 2018. Organizations represented both ambulatory care practices and health systems participating in the state of Kansas HIE. Fourteen ambulatory quality measures for 5300 patients were calculated using the data from an individual EHR source and contrasted to calculations when HIE data were added to locally recorded data.

RESULTS

A total of 79% of patients received care at more than 1 facility during the 2018 calendar year. A total of 12 994 applicable quality measure calculations were compared using data from the originating organization vs longitudinal data from the HIE. A total of 15% of all quality measure calculations changed (P < .001) when including HIE data sources, affecting 19% of patients. Changes in quality measure calculations were observed across measures and organizations.

DISCUSSION

These results demonstrate that quality measures calculated using single-site EHR data may be limited by incomplete information. Effective data sharing significantly changes quality calculations, which affect healthcare payments, patient safety, and care quality.

CONCLUSIONS

Federal, state, and commercial programs that use quality measurement as part of reimbursement could promote more accurate and representative quality measurement through methods that increase clinical data sharing.

A Survey Of Health Information Exchange Organizations In Advance Of A Nationwide Connectivity Framework

After more than a decade of investment in electronic health information exchange (HIE), the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology is advancing a national framework-the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement-to connect islands of electronic data sharing. This national framework creates new potential opportunities and challenges for state and local health information organizations (HIOs). We undertook our sixth national HIO survey to assess the current state of HIOs and to newly examine anticipated responses to the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement. We identified eighty-nine operational HIOs, down from 106 in 2014. Although more than half of HIOs struggled with financial viability and competition from health information technology vendor-based HIE networks, many are large in scale, offer a breadth of services to diverse participants, and engage in network-to-network connectivity. Looking ahead, 56 percent of HIOs planned to participate in the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement, and 41 percent were unsure. As the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement advances basic network-to-network connectivity, HIOs that have experience with such connectivity while also offering value-added services will be well positioned for sustainability and growth.

Social determinants of health in electronic health records and their impact on analysis and risk prediction: A systematic review

OBJECTIVE

This integrative review identifies and analyzes the extant literature to examine the integration of social determinants of health (SDoH) domains into electronic health records (EHRs), their impact on risk prediction, and the specific outcomes and SDoH domains that have been tracked.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

In accordance with the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines, we conducted a literature search in the PubMed, CINAHL, Cochrane, EMBASE, and PsycINFO databases for English language studies published until March 2020 that examined SDoH domains in the context of EHRs.

RESULTS

Our search strategy identified 71 unique studies that are directly related to the research questions. 75% of the included studies were published since 2017, and 68% were U.S.-based. 79% of the reviewed articles integrated SDoH information from external data sources into EHRs, and the rest of them extracted SDoH information from unstructured clinical notes in the EHRs. We found that all but 1 study using external area-level SDoH data reported minimum contribution to performance improvement in the predictive models. In contrast, studies that incorporated individual-level SDoH data reported improved predictive performance of various outcomes such as service referrals, medication adherence, and risk of 30-day readmission. We also found little consensus on the SDoH measures used in the literature and current screening tools.

CONCLUSIONS

The literature provides early and rapidly growing evidence that integrating individual-level SDoH into EHRs can assist in risk assessment and predicting healthcare utilization and health outcomes, which further motivates efforts to collect and standardize patient-level SDoH information.

Hospital adoption of multiple health information exchange approaches and information accessibility

OBJECTIVE

Hospital engagement in electronic health information exchange (HIE) has increased over recent years. We aimed to 1) determine the change in adoption of 3 types of information exchange: secure messaging, provider portals, and use of an HIE; and 2) to assess if growth in each approach corresponded to increased ability to access and integrate patient information from outside providers.

METHODS

Panel analysis of all nonfederal, acute care hospitals in the United States using hospital- and year-fixed effects. The sample consisted of 1917 hospitals that responded to the American Hospital Association Information Technology Supplement every year from 2014 to 2016.

RESULTS

Adoption of each approach increased by 9-15 percentage points over the study period. The average number of HIE approaches used by each hospital increased from 1.0 to 1.4. Adoption of each approach was associated with increased likelihood that providers routinely had necessary outside information of 4.2-12.7 percentage points and 4.5-13.3 percentage points increase in information integration. Secure messaging was associated with the largest increase in both. Adoption of 1 approach increased the likelihood of having outside information by 10.3 percentage points, while adopting a second approach further increased the likelihood by 9.5 percentage points. Trends in number of approaches and integration were similar.

DISCUSSION/CONCLUSION

No single HIE tool provided high levels of usable, integrated health information. Instead, hospitals benefited from adopting multiple tools. Policy initiatives that reduce the complexity of enabling high value HIE could result in broader adoption of HIE and use of information to inform care.

Fold-stratified cross-validation for unbiased and privacy-preserving federated learning

OBJECTIVE

We introduce fold-stratified cross-validation, a validation methodology that is compatible with privacy-preserving federated learning and that prevents data leakage caused by duplicates of electronic health records (EHRs).

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Fold-stratified cross-validation complements cross-validation with an initial stratification of EHRs in folds containing patients with similar characteristics, thus ensuring that duplicates of a record are jointly present either in training or in validation folds. Monte Carlo simulations are performed to investigate the properties of fold-stratified cross-validation in the case of a model data analysis using both synthetic data and MIMIC-III (Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care-III) medical records.

RESULTS

In situations in which duplicated EHRs could induce overoptimistic estimations of accuracy, applying fold-stratified cross-validation prevented this bias, while not requiring full deduplication. However, a pessimistic bias might appear if the covariate used for the stratification was strongly associated with the outcome.

DISCUSSION

Although fold-stratified cross-validation presents low computational overhead, to be efficient it requires the preliminary identification of a covariate that is both shared by duplicated records and weakly associated with the outcome. When available, the hash of a personal identifier or a patient's date of birth provides such a covariate. On the contrary, pseudonymization interferes with fold-stratified cross-validation, as it may break the equality of the stratifying covariate among duplicates.

CONCLUSION

Fold-stratified cross-validation is an easy-to-implement methodology that prevents data leakage when a model is trained on distributed EHRs that contain duplicates, while preserving privacy.

Technology-facilitated care coordination in rural areas: What is needed?

BACKGROUND

Health is poorer in rural areas and a major challenge is care coordination for complex chronic conditions. The HITECH and 21st Century Cure Acts emphasize health information exchange which underpins activities required to improve care coordination.

OBJECTIVE AND METHODS

Using semi-structured interviews and surveys, we examined how providers experience electronic health information exchange during care coordination since these Acts were implemented, with a focus on rural settings where health disparities exist. We used a purposive sample that included primary care, acute care hospitals, and community health services in the United States.

FINDINGS

We identified seven themes related to care coordination and information exchange: 'insufficient trust of data'; 'please respond'; 'just fax it'; 'care plans'; 'needle in the haystack'; 're-documentation'; and 'rural reality'. These gaps were magnified when information exchange was required between unaffiliated electronic health records (EHRs) about shared patients, which was more pronounced in rural settings.

CONCLUSION

Policy and incentive modifications are likely needed to overcome the observed health information technology (HIT) shortcomings. Rural settings in the United States accentuate problems that can be addressed through international medical informatics policy makers and the implementation and evaluation of interoperable HIT systems.

Sharing information electronically with other hospitals is associated with increased sharing of patients

OBJECTIVE

One potential benefit of greater electronic health information exchange is a reduction in the effort required for patients to switch between providers. We therefore assessed whether hospital participation in health information organizations (HIOs) led to increased patient sharing.

DATA SOURCES

Secondary data from 2010 to 2016.

STUDY DESIGN

Using hospital-pair and year fixed effects regression models, we assessed change in patient sharing volume following HIO participation by hospitals and compared the effect by the level of market competition and by hospital size.

DATA EXTRACTION METHODS

We used national data on hospital participation in HIOs from the American Hospital Association Information Technology Supplement and data on the volume of Medicare patients shared between pairs of hospitals from 2010 to 2016.

PRINCIPAL FINDINGS

The volume of patients shared between hospitals increased by 2.6 percent when both hospitals participated in a health information organization (P = .008, 95% CI: 0.7%-4.5%). This increase was greater in competitive markets (3.1 percent increase, P = .03 95% CI: 0.3%-5.9%) and between large hospitals (4.3 percent increase, P = .007 95% CI: 1.2%-7.3%). Participation by only one hospital in a pair had no effect on patient sharing.

CONCLUSIONS

Our results suggest that an important policy goal motivating the investment in health information exchange has been at least partially achieved. However, our results also support hospital concerns about the competitive implications of engaging in health information exchange. HIO participation appears to facilitate patient movement between hospitals, likely by lowering switching costs and resulting in greater competition.

Alternative payment models and hospital engagement in health information exchange

OBJECTIVES

To assess whether hospital participation in alternative payment models (APMs) is associated with greater engagement in health information exchange (HIE) along 4 dimensions: volume of patients for whom information is exchanged, diversity of information types, breadth of partner types, and depth of technical approach.

STUDY DESIGN

Pooled, cross-sectional analysis of data on US hospitals from 2014 to 2015.

METHODS

APM participation came from Leavitt Partners data, Medicare public use files, and the American Hospital Association (AHA) Annual Survey. We used Medicare data to measure HIE volume for 798 hospitals attesting to stage 2 Meaningful Use and the AHA Information Technology Supplement to measure HIE diversity, breadth, and depth for 1730 hospitals. We used mixed-effects regression to estimate the association between participation in APMs and each dimension of HIE.

RESULTS

Compared with nonparticipating hospitals, full-year APM participation was associated with lower HIE volume (data were sent for 11 percentage points fewer discharges; P = .003), greater HIE diversity (of 4 data types, 0.3 more were transmitted; P <.001), greater HIE breadth (of 3 partner types, data were sent to 0.3 more; P <.001), and greater HIE depth (the odds of using a push and pull approach were 1.68 times greater; P = .004).

CONCLUSIONS

Our finding that APM participation was associated with greater HIE diversity, breadth, and depth suggests that value-based payment may be spurring improvements in HIE infrastructure. However, our finding that APM participation is associated with lower HIE volume suggests that there may be an incentive to focus HIE investments on a limited number of partners.