WEDI Survey: Blue Button use, awareness up but room for more

Reliance on integrated EHR and medical device data to populate personal health records (PHRs) has increased, according to findings from a Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI) survey.

The nonprofit authority focused on the use of health IT to create efficiencies in healthcare information exchange, announced findings from its recent survey on industry awareness and adoption regarding use of the “Blue Button” implementation guide for exporting patient healthcare records.

WEDI conducted its first survey on Blue Button in 2013, and as a follow up on the progress of industry adoption since that time, WEDI re-evaluated the industry in 2014. WEDI conducted the survey from Oct. 31, 2014 to Dec. 8, 2014, which included 274 respondents across multiple stakeholders, including providers, health plans, vendors and clearinghouses.

Findings include the following:

• Provider respondents remained relatively consistent in their use of integrated EHRs, a significant increase occurred for government respondents from 60 percent in 2013 to 100 percent in 2014.
• Ensuring awareness of Blue Button as an industry-wide tool remains an opportunity.
• Offering the PHR to all patients when implementing a PHR continues to be significant. There is a high percentage (80 percent in 2014) of respondents that are offering the PHR to all patients/members as opposed to only making it available to select subsets of their patients/members.
• Enabling the patient/member to retain control over who has access to their PHR data through privacy controls continues to be important.
• Transmitting data to patients, providers or authorized third parties appears to occur through DIRECT. Health plan and provider respondents both showed an increase in use of DIRECT for transmitting data, while government and technology developer respondents showed a decrease in use of DIRECT.
• Providing patients with a better overall experience continues to show traditional communication methods as top priorities.

“It is clear through our findings that usage and adoption of personal health records continues to grow among industry stakeholders and awareness of Blue Button+ is slowly building,” said WEDI President and CEO Devin Jopp, EdD, in a release. “Our intention is to work closely in support with HHS to help further educate the industry on the usage of the Blue Button Implementation Guide in order to improve adoption of a standardized approach to exporting personal health records. WEDI will continue to monitor industry progress towards this initiative.”

Read more about the findings.