The IAG lists the following “must-dos” for players in the public and private sectors in order to leverage health information exchange to improve patient outcomes.
Providers must:
• Set an expectation that vendors adhere to standards.
• Identify the highest priority information-sharing activities or use cases they want their health IT systems to support.
• Contribute their requirements for testing as the end-users of health IT systems.
• Invest in standardizing care processes and use of systems.
• Actively identify and share lessons learned and best practices.
Vendors must:
• Commit to consistent use of standards and implementation specifications, participate in testing and provide documentation on adherence to standards.
• Share expertise during development of standards, implementation specifications and use cases.
• Be more transparent about technical solutions.
• Align their business case with the needs of their customers.
The federal government must:
• Focus its interoperability efforts on accelerating exchange of data currently collected.
• Improve certification, based on more robust testing.
• Create and support robust testing tools to ensure systems conform to standards that support interoperability.
• Increase public reporting on how vendors support interoperability and information sharing.
• Lead selection of standards, including continued development and maturation of needed standards.
• Actively support adoption of standards by providers.
• Address patient identification and matching.
• Rely on existing policies and the incentives of new models of care to encourage information sharing by providers.
• Adopt a reasonable timeline for change.
Read the full report here.
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