Amanda Biegler

Our group’s final paper discusses the complicated and needed, healthcare quality improvement through utilization of an EHR, electronic health record, and HIE, health information exchange.

This paper analyzes the current state of standards for data structure and content. The paper looks at standards that can be utilized at a regional and community level. We consider the limited model scenario of how a community hospital would implement full digital data sharing with several of its most closely allied physician group practices. The paper discusses data structure, terminology standards and needed interfaces.

The goal is to establish a system that will permit free exchange of patient demographic data, payer information, problem lists, medication lists, laboratory data, transcribed radiology reports, and transcribed clinician notes among all participating organizations. In addition, the paper identifies the gaps and provide recommendations for improvement. The most recent ONCHIT Federal Health Information Technology Strategic Plan specifies this level of data exchange will be nearly universal by 2014 or 2015 and the paper assess this goal.

The presentation reflects on standards, interoperability, how data is organized, connected to a network, shared and managed.