Cost Hinders HIE Interoperability

By Katie Wike, contributing writer

According to a recent presentation from the eHealth Initiative, HIEs continue to struggle with high costs and technology hurdles that make interoperability difficult to achieve.

The 11th annual Survey on Health Data Exchange, conducted by the eHealth Initiative, has found health information exchanges continue to struggle with both cost and technology as barriers to interoperability. A total of 125 HIEs completed the survey, including 74 community-based health information organizations, 26 health care delivery groups, and 25 statewide efforts.

“Overall, the data this year was pretty similar to what we’ve seen in the past couple of years,” said Alex Kontur, research analyst at eHealth Initiative, according to Health Data Management. “On the technology side, we’re still seeing a lot of activity around interface development. Pretty much every organization that we surveyed has had to construct multiple interfaces with different EHR systems.”

The most cited barriers to interoperability, according to iHealth Beat, were:

● 74 said high costs of creating interfaces

● 64 said getting timely responses from EHR vendor interface developers was difficult

● 48 said difficult technical procedures for building interfaces

“Cost was the most frequently cited challenge to interoperability,” said Kontur. “Part of that has to do with the fact that the organizations owning the EHR or the HIE itself have had to bear the brunt of costs for interface development. We saw some misgivings being directed at vendors as 62 organizations want more standardized pricing and integration solutions from their vendor. And, a lot of others – 54 – want to see platforms that are better suited to use out of the box.”

Results also showed that more HIEs are meeting Stage 2 Meaningful Use requirements:

● 101 respondents said they have incorporated Direct secure messaging into their information exchange models

● 81 respondents said that their users access data through secure messaging

● 78 respondents said they offer a Direct address directory

● 85 respondents said they have implemented notification systems to improve care transitions

Download the webinar slides HERE