HIE: Focus on consumers

Not surprisingly, patients are generally okay with the electronic storage and transmission of their health information as long as privacy and security safeguards are in place. This from research published in the September/October issue of Annals of Family Medicine.

Researchers asked participants 42 questions to determine demographic characteristics, self-reported health, healthcare utilization, internet use and perceptions of EHRs and electronic health information exchange (HIE).

Participants were overwhelmingly more likely to trust their providers with the storage and maintenance of personal health information (PHI) than any other group listed, with 51 percent choosing their providers over health plans, hospitals or the government.

A wide majority of participants gave each privacy and security measure listed a high importance rating. These included safeguards against unauthorized viewing (86 percent), ability to see who has viewed your record (86 percent), ability to stop information from being stored electronically (84 percent), ability to stop all viewing of the record (83 percent) and ability to choose what parts of the record are shared electronically (78 percent).

“Consumer buy-in is necessary for the success of national HIE initiatives,” the researchers concluded.

 However, happenings such as the hacking of the Utah Health Exchange, a state insurance exchange whose development started several years before the healthcare reform law mandated exchanges, may put that buy-in in jeopardy.

Words were garbled, headlines blurred and some pages were inaccessible, and the site was down for approximately 10 days. Fortunately, protected health information is on a separate secure site and was not affected.

Another interesting development was the announcement that the board of directors of the Kansas health information exchange (KHIE) voted to dissolve itself and turn its operation over to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE).

The public-private partnership was running out of money to cover operating expenses but said the dissolution does not reflect on data-sharing capabilities. In the report, KDHE also said that the transition is a logical progression since KHIE had evolved into a "policy-defining entity," and that most of the needed policies had been completed or were nearing completion.   

Where does your facility stand regarding HIE? Are you actively sharing data and are your privacy and security policies and procedures up to snuff? Please share your experiences.

Beth Walsh
CI+T Editor
bwalsh@trimedmedia.com