Are HIEs Beneficial?

By Katie Wike, contributing writer

A recent study shows that, while health information exchanges are widely believed to improve patient care and outcomes, there is little evidence that these benefits actually exist.

Research published by Health Affairs claims that, although the benefits of health information exchanges have been widely publicized, there is little information to support this. HIEs are said to provide benefits such as boosting efficiency, reducing healthcare costs, and improving outcomes for patients.

Health Data Management reports researchers reviewed 27 studies of HIEs and came to the conclusion that although 57 percent of published analyses reported some benefit from HIE, they also reported articles employing study designs having strong internal validity were less likely to conclude that HIEs resulted in such benefits.

“Among six articles with strong internal validity, one study reported paradoxical negative effects, three studies found no effect, and two studies reported that HIE led to benefits,” write researchers. “Furthermore, these two studies had narrower focuses than the others.”

Researchers wanted to make sure that readers understand, however, that they are not saying HIEs don’t have any benefits. They just point out that they have not been validated through research.

“It’s simply premature to say if we have or have not gotten our money’s worth out of HIE,” said Nir Menachemi, a professor and chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management in the Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and one of the authors of the paper.

“There is no strong documented evidence in the studies that healthcare benefits are directly attributable to the use of HIE, rather than being correlated or incidentally related,” said Menachemi. “We still expect HIE benefits will accrue, but currently no one has been able to demonstrate in a general and convincing way that we can expect to see these benefits.”