The purpose of this assignment is to review the current state of development for your state’s health information exchange (HIE) and current participation rate.
Compare your state to three states with similar demographics. Write a 1,000-1,250 word summary related to the ability of your state’s HIE to share data and improve the following:
- Coordination of care
- Public health initiatives
- Evidence-based research
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Solution
Arizona’s Healthcare Information Exchange
The State Health Information Exchange (HIE) helps states embrace innovative approaches that enable healthcare providers to share and access patients’ medical record data electronically. HIE is an important aspect since it also helps to secure medical records since, in most healthcare facilities, medical records are in the form of paper works. The paper focuses on the Health Information Exchange in Arizona compared to other states with similar demographics, including California, Alaska, and Alabama. The focus will be on Arizona’s HIE’s ability to share data and improve coordination of care, public health initiative and evidence-based research.
Arizona’s HIE’s Ability in Sharing Data
Health Information Exchange uses electronic health record systems of clinicians and providers to help them access and share patient information and coordinate care. Jason (2021) states that Arizona uses Health Current, which connects over 500 Arizona healthcare facilities such as hospitals, first responders, and labs, among other facilities. The better part of using HIE in Arizona is that the patient gets notified when the healthcare facilities make their health information available in the Health Current. Jason (2020) states that the Health Current in Arizona launched a cloud-based platform known as Healthcare’s Health Data Hub to improve data sharing. The platform aims at promoting interoperability and increasing the safety of participating healthcare systems.
Comparison of Arizona’s HIE’s Ability in Sharing Data with California, Alaska, and Alabama
Unlike Arizona’s progress, California is still struggling to ensure that they can consolidate a lot of health information in their system, considering that the State has various privacy laws that govern health data sharing (Health, 2021). For Alaska, the State incorporates Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC), which has greatly contributed to Alaska’s HIE expansion that enables healthcare facilities across Alaska to easily and securely share patients’ medical records (Nelson, 2021). Just like Alaska and Arizona, Alabama’s HIE also increases its ability in data sharing through One Health Record joining the Strategic Health Information Exchange Collaboration (SHIEC) to extend its health data access and services in rural areas for better State’s health outcome encounters (Monica, 2018). Therefore, like most States, Arizona aims to engage in more secure health data sharing to improve the overall patient outcome in their states by incorporating advanced technology in their health systems.
Arizona’s Healthcare Information Exchange Functions
The main functions of Arizona’s HIE include improving coordination of care, public health initiative and evidence-based research. Jason (2020) indicates that Arizona is one step ahead of other States that use HIE due to its incorporation of Health Data Hub. All healthcare organizations that use Health Data Hub can easily create, manage, and optimize their workflow while providing patient data and optimizing the systems data aggregation across the system. Hence, it becomes easy for the healthcare providers to coordinate care, public health initiatives, and conduct evidence-based research. In coordinating care, the healthcare providers can easily search for clinical and patient information that helps them to improve care.
Regarding public health initiatives, Health Data Hub helps healthcare facilities identify areas with high preferences of diseases to design meaningful ways to help curb the situations (Jason, 2021). For instance, before identifying the issues in different areas, the clinical researchers can help healthcare organizations in Arizona identify the situations requiring fast remedies. The researchers can analyze the patient data in evidence-based practices since the data is readily available to the authorized personnel. Hence, Arizona’s HIE’s an essential approach that provides meaningful information that can help healthcare providers improve the overall healthcare outcomes.
Comparison of Arizona’s Healthcare Information Exchange Functions with California, Alaska, and Alabama
California, Alaska, and Alabama’s coordination of care also helps in providing shared data across different institutions and numerous providers. Akhlaq et al. (2017) assert that care coordination is essential since it helps avoid duplicating patients’ services, thus maximizing time to attend to different patients. However, the California care coordination may limit the healthcare providers in achieving full care coordination since the healthcare providers cannot share all information.
Public Health initiatives in Alabama, Alaska, and California help the States identify different communities’ problems. Akhlaq et al. (2017) assert that when a health information exchange helps carry out effective public health initiatives, they can easily initiate and awareness of various conditions. It becomes easy to make informed decisions that help the community members and healthcare providers curb mental health and chronic diseases from bringing along adverse effects.
Healthcare information exchangeability facilitates evidence-Based research to hold the data repository systems. Akhlaq et al. (2017) assert that all states with integrated HIE can easily conduct evidence-based research using readily available data within the systems. As a result, it becomes easy for clinical researchers to also use the data in large volumes. Therefore, just like in Arizona, approved clinical researchers in Alabama, Alaska, and California can easily
conduct effective research to help healthcare providers diagnose and treat the patients using the right procedures, thus increasing patient satisfaction and safety. Despite the effectiveness of the HIE in all four States, the main concern remains on ways to ensure that the health information is subjected to data safety controls which California seems to be more cautious with. However, by Arizona State ensuring that the patients are notified whenever their health data is added to the healthcare system, it increases their trust and confidence.
Conclusion
Arizona’s HIE is greatly comparable with other states with similar demographics. Generally, HIE helps the healthcare providers share and access healthcare data that helps in improving care coordination, public health initiatives, and evidence-based research. However, all states will need to ensure that they have increased measures on patient data security.
References
Akhlaq, A., Sheikh, A., & Pagliari, C. (2017). Health information exchange as a complex and adaptive construct: scoping review. Journal of Innovation in Health Informatics, 23(4), 633-683.
Health, M. (February 25, 2021). Why California Needs Better Data Exchange: Challenges, Impacts, and Policy Options for a 21st Century Health System. CHCF. https://www.chcf.org/publication/why-california-needs-better-data-exchange-challenges-impacts-and-policy-options-for-a-21st-century-health-system/
Jason, C. (February 26, 2020). Arizona’s HIE Adds Health Data Hub to Improve Operability. EHRIntelligence. https://ehrintelligence.com/news/arizona-hie-adds-health-data-hub-to-improve-interoperability
Monica, K. (May 01, 2018). Alabama HIE Joins SHIEC to Improve Rural Health Data Access. EHRIntelligence. https://ehrintelligence.com/news/alabama-hie-joins-shiec-to-improve-rural-health-data-access1
Nelson, H. (May 27, 2021). How a Health Information Exchange Consortium Helped Cut Costs. EHRIntelligence. https://ehrintelligence.com/news/how-a-health-information-exchange-consortium-helped-cut-costs