Weekly roundup: Call for improvements on numerous fronts
The theme for this week appears to be improvement and various ways in which health IT can do better.
For example, a number of health information exchange (HIE) interoperability and interface features that should be in place today are not, according to the University of California Davis Institute for Population Health Improvement (IPHI). The IPHI’s California Health eQuality program released a buyer’s guide to help providers determine the current capabilities of vendors’ products.
“The cost and time it takes to implement bi-directional interfaces so that EHRs of two or more healthcare professionals, organizations or providers can fully communicate is a major hurdle,” the buyer’s guide read. “Meaningful Use requirements for Stage 1 and Stage 2 require some HIE capabilities. Those requirements, however, are limited and do not cover the full range of interoperability and interface features needed for robust HIE.”
Meanwhile, EHR technology requires changes to protect the medical privacy of adolescent patients, the American Academy of Pediatrics said in a new policy statement.
The problem is that the Health IT for Economic and Clinical Health Act ties privacy requirements for EHRs to compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which does not address adolescent privacy, according to the statement.
Because EHRs can't filter or compartmentalize health information, the statement said, it's been up to states to identify ways to safely exchange health information for adolescents without violating their privacy.
"Continued lack of privacy protection in EHRs risks diminishing adolescent access to care, potentially resulting in higher adolescent pregnancy and STI (including HIV) rates, and unraveling significant gains that have been achieved," according to the statement.
The ECRI Institute released its sixth annual report listing the top health technology hazards and this year’s report includes several technology advances that have the potential to cause patient harm, including alarm hazards, patient/data mismatches in EHRs and other health IT systems and interoperability failures with medical devices and health IT systems.
Can you relate to these calls for improvement? Please share your experience.
Beth Walsh
Clinical Innovation + Technology editor
bwalsh@trimedmedia.com
Editor
Editor Beth earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and master’s in health communication. She has worked in hospital, academic and publishing settings over the past 20 years. Beth joined TriMed in 2005, as editor of CMIO and Clinical Innovation + Technology. When not covering all things related to health IT, she spends time with her husband and three children.