Disadvantages Of Health Information Exchange

Health information exchange or HIE allows doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and other health care providers and patients to access vital medical information. It also allows them to share medical information securely and electronically. HIE improves the speed, quality, safety, and the cost of patient care.For many years patient's files were stored using paper methods, transferring them by mail, fax or transferred it by hand to every appointment. Changing to electronic file improves the completeness of patient's medical records. It makes decision making of healthcare providers avoid readmissions, avoid medication errors, improve diagnosis, and decreases the amount of times test are reordered. There are other benefits to health information exchange

They are able to use secure messaging to ask point related questions and receive shorter response times than waiting on a phone calls. This method is efficient with the doctors as well, they are not being overloaded with incoming phone calls and patients avoid miscommunication or missed phone calls. Once they leave their doctor they are able to review doctors' notes in the case the patient did not remember what was discussed. Health information exchange has many benefits, however there are many challenges as well. HIEs have to select one or more vendor to deliver services in a successful manner. In their selection, they have to make sure the vendor is the best. They must offer experienced consulting services and support staff and offer a solution suite to meet their stakeholder's needs. Legal costs and time used to create data sharing agreements are directly proportional to the number

Adding more parties to sharing data along with the time it takes to complete a cohesive DURSA agreement can be lengthy and costly. Another challenge of HIE is that HIEs can sometimes be viewed as providing duplicative information or solutions offering patient portals or patient related information directly to the consumer.Health information exchange has three key forms: directed exchange, query-based exchange, and consumer mediated exchange. Directed exchange is the “ability to send and receive secure information electronically between care providers to support coordinated care” Examples of patient information include ancillary test orders and results, patient care summaries, or consultation reports. The encrypted patient information is electronically sent securely between parties with an established relationship. Query-based exchange is the “ability for providers to find and/or request information on a patient from other providers, often used for unplanned care. Query-based exchange is used to search and discover accessible clinical sources on a patient” For example, a query-based exchange can assist a provider in obtaining a health record on a patient who is visiting from another state, resulting in more informed decisions about the care of the patient. Consumer-mediated exchange is the “ability for patients to aggregate and control the use of their health information