INSIDE CHIME: A Call to Action on Interoperability

Inside CHIME - header

mprobst 10.8.15 by Marc Probst, CHIME Board of Trustees Chair-elect;
Chief Information Officer, Intermountain Healthcare

CHIME and KLAS study identifies common areas where providers, vendors and other stakeholders can break down barriers to information exchange.

Interoperability remains one of the — if not the — biggest barriers to creating a truly connected healthcare delivery system. As we continue to digitize healthcare and patients become more mobile, ensuring that records get from one care setting to another is vital.

Looking across the nation, there are pockets where true information exchange is succeeding, but if we are going to achieve the Triple Aim, we need to make interoperability a national priority. KLAS and CHIME recently collaborated on a study that should serve as a call to action on interoperability and information exchange.

In “Interoperability 2015: Current State and Next Steps,” providers and vendors alike identified standards development and the lack of a national patient identifier as the biggest barriers to advancing the interoperability.

KLAS spent three months interviewing senior IT leaders from more than 240 provider and vendor organizations, soliciting their input on advances in and barriers to interoperability. CHIME members helped develop the questionnaire. Most providers interviewed for the study see data sharing as inevitable as healthcare evolves and 98 percent said that they would be will to share data, but 82 percent claimed that their competitors were unwilling to do so. Close to 60 percent of providers identified orders and results as their top reason for sharing information, followed by improving care transitions.

Importantly, the report identified several areas that need to be addressed for us to accelerate interoperability, including aligning incentives so that providers and vendors see data exchange as essential to their business objectives. We also need strong governance models in place to ensure compliance with privacy and security laws. And, we must address the issue of a national patient identifier so that clinicians can be confident that they are looking at the right record for the right patient.

An executive summary of the report is available by clicking here. For more information on the complete study, click here.

More Inside CHIME Volume 1, No. 4: