Free Paper Example on Electronic Health Information Exchange

Introduction

Electronic Health Information Exchange is a system that caters for the access of a patient's vital information electronically by doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and other healthcare providers. It is much better than the use of manual instruments to access patients' data such as physical documents. For a hospital to efficiently provide healthcare services to patients it needs the best gear to do the job. This essay looks at certain features of a Health Information Exchange system and ways that it contributes to the growth of the hospital.

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Data Stewardship

For a healthcare organization to rise and escalate above other healthcare organizations in terms of better patient care, the hospital should aim at improving its services. One major way to improve service provision to patients is through improving the organization’s data governance by mainly ensuring that the users which in this case are healthcare personnel are well trained on the data handling knowledge (Unertl Kim M, 2014). This is because when there is poor stewardship our organization even with the best infrastructure would fail to reach maximum potential through underutilization of the infrastructure as a result of poor data stewardship and this is why we must properly execute data stewardship upon the hospital (H. Wu and E. Larue, 2015).

Structures and services

The Health Information Exchange system has certain architectural models including consolidated, federated, switch, patient-managed, and hybrid (Heath, M., Appan 2017). Consolidated consists of multiple individual health organizations that merge on an agreed platform where they share resources using a central data repository. Federated also concerns a joint venture between several hospitals but the only difference is that the resources in this case information shared and managed centrally are stored in different repositories. The switch model would require multiple independent health institutions to come up with unilateral agreements to exchange data. Patient-managed then deals with individual patient storage of one’s electronic records or the creation of a service that allows the patient to directly exchange data with the hospital and this is the only electronic model that would allow us to initiate an electronic information system without including other healthcare organizations. The last architectural model which is hybrid entails joining two or more models of the initial models. In our case, we could implement a hybrid model consisting of patient-managed and federated models of Health Information Exchange architectures because the patients will be able to track their health and stay in touch with the hospital through the patient-managed model and the hospital will be able to efficiently track diseases and help in their treatment through the federated model as it will be able to converse with other hospitals and share knowledge and ideas on disease treatment.

Data Security Policies

To ensure that the hospital's data and information is protected from potential threats such as hackers, the hospital must come up with appropriate data security policies. Some of the policies include employing a vast team of IT experts to handle the hospital’s data and information and connecting to various repositories in different geographical locations and personnel that store the data to enable variety in case one of the repositories loses data. Another policy would be methodically approaching data analysis and profiling repeatable reviewing of the analysis to analyze the profile data sources and potential issues and ensure that the data is appropriately and securely uploaded to the system (Ashfaque, M. F. 2020). What could be improved is the way patients are treated since the Health Information Exchange system would ensure that the patients are properly treated. Another improvement brought to the hospital by the Health Information Exchange system is the elimination of redundant and unnecessary tests to a patient saving the patient’s time and saving the hospital massive resources used in unnecessary testing. The audit trails in data security would be improved through proper audit trail designing and management through the DevOps software which when properly managed ensures maximum audit trail efficiency (Unertl Kim M, 2014). In regards to human factors and user interface technological systems that may seem as challenges such as illiteracy among different people, varied needs among people, and low income for some people as human factors to be taken care of, the organization can implement services such as voice-over services for the illiterate whenever required to write and medical loans and job creations for the financially unstable. On the development of user interface technological systems, a feature such as Artificial Intelligence would be set up so that the issue concerning people with varied needs is dealt with. Artificial Intelligence would also ensure that the systems can meet regulatory requirements that relate to electronic signatures, data correction, and audit logs. In regards to issues on EHRs, HIEs, and RECs with the main issues are staff resistance, lost productivity, and lack of full implementation and data migration (H. Wu and E. Larue, 2015). The first two will be regarded as mental adjustment cases and therefore appropriate techniques such as speeches and gradual introduction of the systems would solve the problem. On the third, which is data migration, an officer would be elected to watch over the process and ensure a smooth flow.

Health Information Exchange Boosting Activities

The Health Information Exchange systems have been implemented in various hospitals in the United States of America. The only minor setback is that one major pattern in which it is executed has not been successfully arrived upon in the USA today (Ashfaque, M. F, 2020). This is because many hospitals and healthcare organizations have different sets of cultures and diversity in services offered. If all of them would have one major way of conducting their services then the best pattern in Healthcare Information Exchange would be achieved. The greatest advantage to this is that the system would be easily manageable to all healthcare institutions even those starting since the system would be easily taught and widespread even to rural areas (Ashfaque, M. F, 2020). What this brings then is the proper management of diseases and viruses in the entire country. This would then greatly reduce the mortality rate in the US and thereby promote healthy citizens in the USA. However, for this to be achieved, the government is taking measures to better the system’s services such as trying to achieve a common approach to obtaining and managing patient consent for disclosure in healthcare organizations. Locally, healthcare institutions are coming up with alliances to unify them to better healthcare services. An alliance such as the Smart Card Alliance works at unifying patient identity, current medical data, and community engagement(Heath, M., 2017). It offers patients a card that works to better patient care, and satisfaction, and lower healthcare costs by linking the patient directly and easily tracking the patient's records.

Conclusion

The hospital would grow immensely with the proposed model of Healthcare Information Exchange. It would help us achieve our current goals as hospital management to deliver quality healthcare services, be the leading hospital in the States if not the world, and strive to reach boundaries and expand even to places none has stepped foot. This is because the model would save equipment for testing through limiting unnecessary testing and recording data and store it conveniently such that it is accessible from anywhere on the globe and with these advantages then why not?

References

H. Wu and E. Larue, "Barriers and Facilitators of Health Information Exchange (HIE) Adoption in the United States," 2015 48th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Kauai, HI, 2015, pp. 2942-2949, DOI: 10.1109/HICSS.2015.356.

Unertl Kim M., Johnson Kevin B., Lorenzi Nancy M. Understanding the impact of health information exchange technology: lessons from the MidSouth eHealth Alliance. 7th Annual Public Health Informatics Conference 2014 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Heath, M., Appan, R., & Gudigantala, N. (2017). Exploring health information exchange (HIE) through collaboration framework: normative guidelines for its leadership of healthcare organizations. Information Systems Management, 34(2), 137-156.

Ashfaque, M. F. (2020). Adoption of the health information exchange (HIE) system and the role of the healthcare leadership.