Sharing information across hospitals in real time is offering hospitals access to much-needed patient data.
Doug Dietzman, executive director at Great Lakes Health Connect, a Michigan health information exchange, told Hospitals & Health Networks that a hospital was able to detect that a patient in the ER who just requested a series of services and tests had actually been to another hospital a few minutes down the road just one hour earlier.
As a result, the hospital did not perform care that would eventually go uncompensated, and further, the hospital was able to assemble the behavioral health resources for this person who was visiting two ERs in under an hour, he said in the video interview.
But while HIEs have made strides to improve interoperability between providers, the financial sustainability of these organizations is hardly a given.
“This business isn’t necessarily viewed as a business very often,” Dietzman told FierceHealthIT earlier this year. "It's a state project and it's a community good and it's a utility; there's truth to all of those things,” he said, adding that in order to do the work he does, “you have to make enough money to cover your expenses to provide and do the good."
And while HIEs used to be integral for Meaningful Use requirements, the new changes in MACRA made “some progress” in helping providers adopt technology, Dietzman said during the video, adding that the MACRA overhaul represented an upgrade from Meaningful Use as it allows providers to accomplish regulatory goals in more creative ways.
View the full H&HN interview below.