Health Information Exchange (HIE)
Health Information Exchange (HIE) refers to both the electronic system that facilitates the sharing of patient medical records and the process involved in that sharing. The primary goal of HIE is to enhance patient care by allowing healthcare providers across various networks—local, regional, and national—to access and exchange critical health information, including electronic health records (EHR), prescriptions, and medical histories. This collaborative approach aims to reduce redundancies in testing and treatment, ultimately lowering healthcare costs and minimizing the risk of misdiagnosis.
HIEs enable healthcare professionals to make informed decisions quickly, particularly in emergency situations, and empower patients to take an active role in their own health management. Various types of HIE exist, including direct exchange, query-based exchange, and consumer-mediated exchange, each serving different needs within the healthcare system. As HIE technology continues to evolve, efforts are underway to standardize its operation across the United States, supported by organizations like the National eHealth Collaborative. With a significant percentage of physicians utilizing digital health record systems, HIE is playing an increasingly vital role in modern healthcare, focusing on improving efficiency while maintaining patient privacy.
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Health Information Exchange (HIE)
Health information exchange (HIE) is both a system that enables patient medical records to be shared electronically and the process by which the information is shared. HIE represents a concerted, collaborative effort to digitize medical records and to provide the means for medical professionals and organizations across local, regional, and national networks to offer services that improve patient care and reduce costs and redundancies.
Overview
When patients are part of an HIE, their electronic health records (EHR)—including prescriptions, preexisting conditions, and primary-care providers—are stored on an electronic database that is accessible by physicians, nurses, and patients. An HIE allows medical personnel to make informed diagnoses and decisions and patients to be proactive and directly involved in healthcare. An HIE helps physicians in various locales provide educated care for overlapping patients, eliminating redundancies in testing (thus limiting costs to insurance companies, medical institutions, and/or patients) and reducing the likelihood of misdiagnosis. An HIE can also be used in a more general sense to compile statistics on medical conditions, which allows public-health researchers to create and implement policy.
Perhaps the single biggest impact that an HIE can have on a medical system is cost reduction. In addition to the elimination of some administrative costs, an HIE can also cut down on the cost of unnecessary or redundant medical procedures. A 2013 study by the Medical University of South Carolina examined the potential benefits of an HIE in emergency rooms and found that such a system saved approximately two thousand dollars per patient. Furthermore, the study found that an HIE also saves time, reporting an average of more than one hundred minutes saved per patient.
The US Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, has been tasked with implementing a nationwide HIE and improving health information technology (HIT) within the medical system. It outlines three types of HIE: direct exchange, query-based exchange,” and “consumer-mediated exchange.” The first allows physicians and nurses to trade information about a patient in order to provide collaborative assistance. The second type helps medical personnel access a patient’s EHR in the case of unforeseen care; this type of HIE would be most prominent in emergency-room settings. The third type provides a tool for patients to dictate how their EHR is used by health providers.
HIEs are rapidly replacing paper-based systems for compiling and filing patient medical records. As a result, both private companies and government organizations are attempting to standardize the ways in which HIEs operate. The National eHealth Collaborative (NeHC) assists private and public organizations in developing a cohesive HIE for the United States as both information technology and national health care initiatives evolve. In 2012, the NeHC released a report titled Health Information Exchange Roadmap: The Landscape and a Path Forward intended to serve as a guide for those working to implement HIE and to outline strategies and benefits. According to the 2013 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, approximately 80 percent of physicians reported using a type of digital health record system in their office. Health information technology is a burgeoning field, underpinned by an effective HIE that provides for patient privacy, speedy information gathering, and the reduction in costs.
Bibliography
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