To Foster Information Exchange, Revise HIPAA and HITECH

We know that when patients are provided with access to their medical records, they feel more in control of their care, understand their health conditions and their care plans better, prepare for their visits, and adhere more to their medications. Despite patient portals’ usability challenges for certain groups of patients and disadvantaged populations, they not only help patients and their care partners but also are a significant means to reducing overhead costs for providers. When physicians are provided with instant electronic access to their patients’ medical data, both quality and efficiency of care radically improve. Overall, an interoperable system across the United States that provides instant access to medical records is estimated to reduce the costs of health care services by $371 billion per year. Interoperability Efforts Have Failed Given the benefits of interoperability and free flow of data, the US government has already spent more than $35 billion under the meaningful use program to subsidize the adoption cost of electronic health records (EHRs) systems. That was a massive investment. A part of this budget was allocated to the establishment of health information exchange platforms that were to connect these different EHR systems and allow the transmission of data among them. Yet, almost a decade after spending that budget, health information is rarely exchanged between providers, despite the fact that almost all of them now use an EHR system. EHR Vendors And...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - Category: Health Management Authors: Tags: Health IT Health Policy Lab Organization and Delivery electronic health records HIPAA HITECH medical data blocking rights to access health data sharing health information Source Type: blogs