In emergency medicine, clinicians are often faced with making quick decisions without access to a patient's full medical record. As such, health information exchanges present a potentially effective solution to provide emergency physicians with a full patient record and help HIEs achieve their full value.
An article in Annals of Emergency Medicine outlines the following five recommendations, from practice workflows to policy adjustments, to boost support and usability of HIEs in emergency medicine.
1. Emergency physicians should participate in regional and federal HIEs and related activities to ensure that their interests are represented in policy and workplace discussions.
2. Policies specifically related to HIE data in emergency settings should be developed. Policies should be based on best practices to promote liability protection, such as inadvertently failing to review all available data, taking action using incomplete or missing data or inadvertently accessing the wrong patient's data.
3. Legislation and regulatory efforts at the federal level should support standards for exchanging health information, including developing and prioritizing data elements pertinent to emergency care and prioritizing emergency medicine-specific interface and workflow needs.
4. Emergency physicians need care standards and protocols for integrating HIEs into emergency departments. Such functional requirements and implementation practices include workflow optimization and making pertinent information available to clinicians, either by pushing the information through flags or presenting certain information through notifications or alerts.
5. Local professional groups can work with HIEs to conduct pilot programs and provide necessary data for physicians in emergency care.
"Health information exchange provides clinician access to patient health information from multiple sources across the spectrum of care. This can provide a more complete longitudinal record, which more accurately reflects the way most patients obtain care: across multiple providers and provider organizations," the authors wrote. "Although current health information exchanges are limited to geographic regions, the ultimate goal is a nationwide health information network to allow patient health information access globally."
More articles on HIEs:
15 thoughts on interoperability from healthcare leaders
10 things to know about health information exchanges
The state of HIEs and direct messaging: 18 key findings from HIMSS