A federal interoperability roadmap isn't enough to appropriately address the current barriers to information exchange, according to a new report from the American Hospital Association.

With only 40 percent of hospitals able to use the information they receive, immediate action is needed to achieve seamless data exchange across vendors and among health systems according to "Why Interoperability Matters." 

AHA offers a long list of criticisms on the current state of interoperability. For one thing, health IT tools are essential for building an interoperable healthcare industry, but the tools are expensive, unwieldy and do not yet support easy information sharing. This lack of interoperability can come in the form of incorrect lab values appearing in the wrong section of a patient record or as fields in a critical care summary missing when a clinician needs them.

Care coordination, patient engagement and better reporting for public health, quality and safety data all rely on interoperability the AHA report points out.

A critical factor in engaging patients is empowering them with meaningful information about their own health, but most patients still cannot gain access to their electronic information, according to an AHRQ study.

More than one-third of patients report an increased burden from their provider due to lack of meaningful information exchange, including having to redo a test or procedure because earlier information was unavailable and having to provide medical history due to EHR complications.

The lack of interoperability also prevents accurate and thorough public health reporting. 

Interfaces can be used in some cases, but even so they are costly--one single hospital's fully integrated EHR may require hundreds of separate interfaces for different uses.

Some standards are so loosely defined and interpreted that they wind up becoming interoperability barriers, rather than enablers. If providers do not collect data in uniform ways and clinicians don't use the same terminologies when they input and classify data no one is working with the same information.

The federal government must take true steps to support interoperability or patients will continue to be shortchanged, argued AHA.

"The current inability for electronic systems to speak the same language to one another and to efficiently and correctly transmit information–-to be interoperable–is among the most pressing issues facing healthcare stakeholders today," the AHA report concludes.