States consider health information exchanges and RHIOs (pick your acronym) to be their top e-health priorities, according to a new Commonwealth Fund report. When surveyed in 2007, 25 of 41 of states said that HIE adoption was one of their top two e-health priorities, and 12 said HIE policy development was a key initiative. Meanwhile, states cited the other usual suspects in third, fourth and fifth place as priorities, namely EMRs, e-prescribing and addressing health data privacy and security issues.
States said that the biggest obstacle to jump-starting HIE development efforts were getting together funding for implementation and long-term operations. (Reading between the lines, it appears that state policy-makers aren't too confident that HIEs or RHIOs can be self-financing, as some advocates seem to be.) Many said they had difficulty building a business case for HIEs, lacked adequate standards and shared terminology to use.
To learn more about the study's results:
- read this Government Health IT article