HIE and physician handoffs

Mary Stevens, editor, CMIO magazine

The question-and-answer session at the end of a presentation is usually a good way to gauge an audience’s issues associated with a particular topic. Case in point: The final minutes of a recent National eHealth Collaborative webinar, “One Size Does Not Fit All: Exploring Various Forms of Exchange.”

Participants were Cris Ross, executive vice president and general manager of Clinical Interoperability at Surescripts; David Dissinger, manager of integrated services at HealthBridge, a nationally recognized HIE; and Jon Zimmerman of Availity. All three weighed in on physician-to-physician handoffs.

Q: What is the best method for physician-to-physician handoffs—where knowing what information was sent, tailoring it to the recipient, and acknowledgment of receipt is necessary?

Dissinger: As we’re working with states of Kentucky and Ohio and the other three exchanges in Indiana, that’s a big topic, how we’re going set that up to allow physicians to send [information] between communities. Our big implementation in the next couple of weeks is going to be a [Direct] pilot project with physicians signed on.

Zimmerman: What you send will only be used if a receiver can get it in time, in a workflow, in the way that his or her practice or hospital operates. Receiving is probably even more important than the sending part when we’re trying to figure out how we’re going to get adoption.

Dissinger: We’re working to understand how physicians are implementing it into their workflow. … We've taken the stance that we accept [information] into [our] Mirth results repository and then send practices an XML document, but we’ll also send a PDF that will allow them [to] view it in a readable format. The workflow in the practices of receiving that data is not there yet.

Zimmerman: I think it is there, it’s just not electronic, so it’s wise to offer that in a PDF.

Ross: It’s also a case [of] good-enough data at the right time is better than perfect data that we have to wait years for, or data that arrive in a channel that’s not visible to the physician at the point of care at the time of practice. Especially primary care is stretched so thin, asking them to take on other tasks outside their normal workflow will get in the way of adoption.

Zimmerman: If we don’t make it easy for them, it won’t work. If it won’t work, it’s our fault. We have to make this work.

Is your HIE making handoffs work? Let me know at mstevens@trimedmedia.com. We’re also asking for your input about HIE and other challenges in our 2011 Health IT Top Trends survey. You could win an iPad 2 for your efforts. Click here for more information.

Mary Stevens, editor