Dive Brief:
- A recent survey conducted by the American Hospital Association and released by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT shows that health information exchange between U.S. hospitals and outside providers is increasing significantly.
- Three-quarters of hospitals reported that in 2014, they exchanged health information electronically with outside hospitals or ambulatory care providers, an 85% increase from when the AHA first began collecting data in 2008 and a 23% increase from 2013.
- More than six in ten hospitals reported electronically exchanging health information with outside hospitals; almost seven in ten reported electronically exchanging health information with outside ambulatory providers.
Dive Insight:
"We anticipate that the exchange of care summaries among hospitals will increase as hospitals implement EHRs certified to meet ONC's 2014 health IT certification regulation," Matthew Swain, Program Analyst and Erica Galvez, Interoperability and Exchange Portfolio Manager, said in a joint ONC blog post.
Swain and Galvez say there is still room for improvement. "In 2013, less than half of hospitals routinely electronically notified a patient's primary care provider inside their system when they entered an emergency room, and roughly one-quarter notified primary care providers outside of their system," they say in their post. "Only one in ten hospitals provided their patients with the ability to transmit information from their medical record to a third party."