Last week’s meeting of the HIT Policy Committee reportedly included extensive discussions concerning the future of the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN).
A recent report suggests that the timing of that discussion may be just right.
Observers of last week’s meeting reported that “committee members said the NHIN, a federal interoperability initiative begun in 2004, must now align itself with the newer and more urgent timeline established in the HITECH part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.”
While “the original NHIN was often described as a wired network providing points of access to hospitals via health information exchanges”, policymakers are now viewing the “NHIN as a more basic set of services designed to expedite meaningful use, including an emphasis on ‘push’ transactions, electronic directories, a reliance on secure transport services via the Internet and practices for authenticating information handling.”
For further help understanding the current reality of information exchange between providers, policymakers may want to refer to a recent study that points to the frustration healthcare providers are still experiencing as they try to coordinate care using current information systems. The study, "Are Electronic Medical Records Helpful for Care Coordination? Experiences of Physician Practices," was conducted by the Center for Studying Health System Change and published online in the Journal of General Internal Medicine in December 2009.
According to a summary of the study, “there is a gap between policy-makers’ expectation of, and clinical practitioners’ experience with, current electronic medical records’ ability to support coordination of care. Policymakers could expand current health information technology policies to support assessment of how well the technology facilitates tasks necessary for coordination.”
The summary also suggests that “policymakers could encourage the evolution of EMR technology to include capabilities that support coordination, for example, allowing for inter-practice data exchange and multi-provider clinical decision support.”
It should be noted that, not surprisingly, the HIT Policy Committee is aware of the problem. The goals approved at last week’s meeting for the future of the NHIN included the creation of policies, standards and services that are “structured so that intermediaries can provide required services for private and secure routing of health information.”
Assuming that the frustrations cited by the providers interviewed for the study are being experienced throughout the healthcare system, achieving that goal alone would be a significant step forward.
Jeff Rowe blogs daily at Priming the Pump.
