Access to updated, accurate patient data is crucial to deliver quality care in the healthcare industry. EHR interoperability offers quick data access to medical providers, enhancing patient outcomes by allowing accurate and coordinated healthcare decisions.
According to a survey of doctors, approximately 94% of them have reported that their medical systems provide easy access to patient records, highlighting the importance of interoperability in healthcare.
This blog will discuss how EHR interoperability improves patient safety and outcomes, from reducing medical errors to empowering patients.
EHR interoperability enables healthcare providers to share accurate and updated patient information across various systems, improving quality care.
The upcoming sections will focus on the benefits of EHR interoperability and how it enhances patient care.
Improved Information Exchange
EHR systems enable seamless sharing and integration of patient data at a faster pace in healthcare networks, improving the decision-making process. While there are certain EHR interoperability challenges when it comes to information exchange, the benefits far outweigh these challenges.
Furthermore, EHR interoperability reduces the likelihood of incorrect diagnoses, as all information regarding a patient’s medical records, lab results, and treatment plans is readily available.
Reduced Errors Due To Duplicate Testing
According to research published in the National Library of Medicine, 1 out of 4 patients underwent duplicate imaging. In totality, around 32% of cases examined had duplication of testing, compromising the patient care and medical practice’s costs.
Sharing data using EHR interoperability helps avoid duplicative testing since all the caregivers involved in a patient’s care have a single source of information.
With patient records integrated across multiple systems, providers can easily confirm results of the previous tests, thereby avoiding additional expenses, patient discomfort, and unnecessary exposure to additional tests.
This not only improves patient outcomes but also reduces the risks associated with duplicate testing, such as excessive radiation from imaging studies.
Better Care Coordination
Communication between healthcare providers enhances due to EHR interoperability. This collaboration enables medical practitioners to get a detailed view of patient’s health records which allows them to provide better diagnosis, thus highlighting why interoperability is important in healthcare.
Improved Patient Safety
With EHR interoperability, getting immediate access to a patient’s complete medical history has never been easier. It allows practitioners to minimize harmful drug interactions or allergic reactions due to poor prescriptions or medication.
Additionally, EHR interoperability supports safer transitions between healthcare providers, ensuring a smooth discharge process. As Dr. Eric Bricker explains, various groups – patients, hospitals, doctors, government, and more – advocate for data sharing because “it increases patient safety, it improves care of quality, it allows for the tracking of things like pandemics, and it decreases costs.”
Primary Care Advantage
EHR integration has considerable advantages in primary care practice settings because it facilitates the sharing of patients’ health records. This integration improves preventive care delivery because doctors can review patients’ status frequently and detect potential threats early, making more effective decisions.
A survey of 2,088 primary care physicians found that 70% of them were satisfied with access to external health information. However, only 23% of family practice physicians found it easy to use outside healthcare data, with just 8% stating it was very easy to use information from other EHR systems.
Patient Empowerment
Meaningful EHR interoperability results in patients being able to access their health records easily so they can actively participate in their healthcare processes. It means that patients can access test results, medication lists, treatment plans, and make clinical decisions in real-time as they engage their healthcare providers. It minimizes confusion and ensures that the patients have confidence in the care plan made for them.
In the future, the improvement of interoperability will presumably lead to the increased possibility of patient control as to which data is available to different medical providers. Research published by the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI) suggests that focusing on patient-centric access controls and smart contracts improve patient autonomy over medical records through interoperable systems.
This may result in enhanced protection of privacy along with increased patient control over the flow of medical data, which is what the EHR interoperability is all about.
The National Level Impact
The US government has been a key supporter of EHR interoperability because of its positive effects on the provision of care to the patients.
These benefits have led to a massive increase in the use of EHR interoperability for more than a decade. Its use in major US cities has increased from 46% to 70% between 2018- 2023.
The US government has always encouraged the use of EHR interoperability and has taken considerable steps to improve EHR interoperability and promote its adoption. For instance, the 21st Century Cures Act was legalized to normalize the medical data sharing concept, aiming to foster collaboration between public/private organizations and federal agencies to enhance the quality of information sharing.
Furthermore, on April 22, 2024, ONC updated the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA) that intends to provide universal data sharing and access across various healthcare providers to eliminate disparate systems.
Apart from the US government, several other leading organizations are also playing an important part in improving EHR interoperability. An example includes Google’s Health Care, which intends to combine data harmonization, search, and summarization capabilities to massively enhance clinicians' timely access to a unified view of patient records.
Thereby, all these measures highlight the national level impact of EHR interoperability. In the future, there may be stricter rules and regulations to ensure healthcare organizations adhere to the compliance standards of interoperability. These changes may push the rate of adoption of interoperable systems even higher, but they could also pose issues for providers addressing new requirements for workflows and compliance.
Electronic health record interoperability has massively improved patient care as all stakeholders, including patients and healthcare providers, are connected to share accurate information and minimize risks such as wrong prescriptions.
By integrating data sharing seamlessly, EHR and interoperability enhances physicians’ and patients’ roles especially in chronic condition management and prevention care. National implementations are taking interoperability to the next level, and many more improvements in healthcare are being made.
Moving forward, the further adoption of these systems will be essential for positive outcomes and optimized operations. Recognizing upcoming regulations and adopting modern EHR technologies can result in long term success for healthcare providers.