Providers are on the path to interoperability, but they're not necessarily crediting their vendor for it, according to a new report from KLAS Research.
In the report, EMR Interoperability 2014: Where are We on the Yellow Brick Road, KLAS says that 82 percent of 220 providers interviewed said that they felt at least "moderately" successful at interoperability, but it was due to their own efforts, not those of their vendor. Only 6 percent had achieved advanced interoperability.
Health information exchanges were the top interoperability platform, with 20 percent of providers using them to achieve interoperability. However, almost one-third (32 percent) stated that no interoperability feature or platform had made an impact to improve care delivery.
Less than half of the providers said that their electronic medical records vendor cooperates with other vendors. The exception was athenahealth, with almost 85 percent of its customers giving it above average marks. Other vendors where 50 percent or more of their customers said that they cooperated with others were Epic, Allscripts, Cerner, GE Healthcare and MEDITECH.
Allscripts, athenahealth and Epic scored the best in facilitating interfaces and keeping costs down.
Responding providers did not put much stock in multi-vendor industry initiatives such as the CommonWell Health Initiative. More than half (51 percent) weren't familiar with them, had no opinion or were unsure. Only 18 percent were optimistic about these initiatives, while almost a third (31 percent) were "skeptical" about them.
Stakeholders have expressed concern that electronic health records, even those certified for Stage 2 of Meaningful Use, lack the ability to effectively share data. However, there is no consensus as to how the industry should become interoperable.
To learn more:
- here's the announcement
- purchase the report