The largest seismic event since the initial HITECH legislation is about to hit the healthcare industry. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently proposed a rule that, in their words, will “support seamless and secure access, exchange, and use of electronic health information”. This rule is being termed the “information blocking rule” by many in the industry.
Because of the material impact this information blocking rule will have primarily on healthcare provider organizations and secondarily on healthcare IT vendors, we launched research in mid-February 2020 to healthcare decision makers and influencers. We wanted to understand how these healthcare providers and executives feel about the information blocking rule including…
Their interest was significant as we received feedback from nearly 180 healthcare professionals in just a few days. This is what they told us…
It was important to get information from across the continuum of decision makers and influencers.
75% of healthcare professionals tip the scales towards eliminating the barriers to interoperability and improving access to patient information. This is to be expected
“I think on the surface the ability for greater access to information is a great thing. The problem is that even with the question is whether the rule is well thought out enough and has enough safeguards in place to not make it both onerous for those who have to provide the information and secure for patients. It could open up a bit of the wild west if not implemented well.” -CIO, Children’s Hospital.
The belief that patients should have little-to-no say in the access of their own information is, thankfully, shared by very few in the healthcare industry, as evidenced by the data in this chart. In every other industry, the consumer is becoming King/Queen of their own data and healthcare will not be exempt from this trend. Consumerism in healthcare is coming – it’s unavoidable.
“I think it is their right to have access to their information. It may create more questions but if healthcare providers are honest and doing a good job, they should have nothing to fear.” -Director of Nursing, IDN
Data without context and color can be misleading or, at minimum, can be rather trite. We wanted to give a voice to the small minority who said that patients them-selves should have no rights in terms of accessing or controlling their information. This chart highlights the clarification given by those who didn’t think patients should’ve have any control. It’s very important to note (again) that this group of providers only represents a scant 5% of the participant pool. We included a few sample comments below:
“There is no mechanism to prove that they are the ones accessing it without some identification mechanism. Policies in place right now via hospitals/clinics seems to work quite well, at least in Indiana.”-Emergency Medicine Physician, Research Hospital “Information in EHR notes not only could prove detrimental to patients but will increase patients ability to malinger and manipulate physicians in drug seeking They will be able to see documentation of subtle clues documented in EHR and not only modifying their behavior elsewhere but I can already see them suing and accusing of making facts up.” -Chief Medical Officer, Multi-specialty Clinic
Consumerism is coming to healthcare. The rising generation of patients come with an expectation that their data is, by definition, theirs just as it is in nearly every other aspect of their lives. In addition, every clinician has experienced (serious) frustration when requesting the information for a new patient from another organization and wait-ing days, weeks, or longer, to get that information. The result? Inefficiency, duplicate tests, and the like has led to a poor experience for everyone directly involved – patients, clinicians, support staff – being the norm rather than the exception.One of the more intriguing findings in this research is that the vast majority of Epic hospitals are in favor with the information blocking rule which places them at odds with Epic’s vocal opposition to the rule in its present form. Epic, along with Cerner, Allscripts, Meditech, and all the other pertinent health IT vendors, will have no choice but to adapt to this new world. And if this rule becomes the law of the land, so to speak, every hospi-tal and clinic will need to rely on their core IT vendors to help them comply and move forward. And just when we thought healthcare disruption was going to take a breather for a while…
Radiology is the early adopter of technology of healthcare. Need proof? The majority (73%) of holdouts in adopting speech recognition have plans to finally take the plunge.
We received a tremendous response from physicians in a wide variety of specialties. Regardless of their discipline, all are frustrated to one extent or another. Here are the top reasons physicians are reaching the end of their tethers.
In concert with BYU’s Department of Public Health we conducted in-depth research with provider organizations across the country on social determinants of health (SDoH).
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