During the pandemic America’s healthcare systems have been in the spotlight and flaws have been identified. One flaw that hasn’t been getting much attention but will be critical in our post-pandemic future: the lack of health data portability.
The pandemic has made it clear how important it is for discrete data to move between multiple systems and users. Public health officials have struggled to get a complete picture of the pandemic in part because the necessary data — including basic information like the number of cases, gets stuck in inaccessible silos. Without interoperability between clinical systems and healthcare applications data is extremely difficult to manage and the data has no value.
Looking beyond the pandemic, easy and secure discrete data-sharing is crucial to building the future of healthcare that everyone wants. It is a future in which medical records/information needs to be shared in discrete formats. The days of JUST transferring PDF medical records needs to be obsolete. Healthcare data should be able to be shared so that a doctor or specialist can glean insights from that information that improves a patient’s life.
Or we could start with a more modest goal: patients won’t have to fill out those endless medical history forms every time they see a new doctor, because technology like Extract Systems can pull data from a transfer of medical records. Data extraction is crucial to creating a more user-friendly healthcare system with more tightly coordinated care and ultimately, better outcomes.
Will Federal regulations help healthcare data move?
In March 2020, new regulation was introduced to require healthcare providers to adhere to a set of data standards known as Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources, or FHIR. FHIR mandates that electronic health records (EHR) systems use APIs, the common protocol modern software applications use to respond to data requests. APIs enable software applications to “talk” with each other and share data more easily. Because of the pandemic, however, the FHIR requirement won’t be enforced until July 2021.
Moving the fragmented U.S. healthcare system toward a common standard for the secure storage and portability of patient data is an important step. And the idea that both patients and providers deserve easy and usable access to their medical records is bipartisan.
But FHIR alone will not solve the problem. There are additional hurdles that healthcare providers and the private sector will have to clear in order to make healthcare data truly accessible to patients and useful to improve care.
FHIR will not solve the problem entirely – Extract Systems Can!
EMR companies have made data-sharing difficult for providers. If you have ever changed doctors, you know how hard it can be to share medical records with a new provider. EMRs aren’t designed to make it easy for patients to get a second opinion, or even see a specialist in a different practice. Extract Systems allows for discrete data to be shared when a patient changes health systems.
FHIR does not require using discrete data -
The other hurdle is more technical. The new regulations only require EHRs and clinical systems to allow read-only access to patient data. That means that you can “see” data out of an EHR or clinical system, but ‘pulling/using’ discrete data is not supported. Discrete data matters here in that it allows provider to update their information based on work with other providers. Read-only access with a shared standard is an important step forward, but on its own won’t unlock patient data and deliver the full-performance interoperability we need.
Extract Systems offers innovative software that will actually improve healthcare systems. We maximize usefulness for both patient and provider, with technology bridging the gap to allow discrete data to be retrieved from a patient’s medical records, so it can be used in collaboration with clinicians.
As useful as the FHIR regulation might be, it only goes part way toward true data liquidity. Given the pandemic and historical precedents for prior healthcare-tech regulations like Meaningful Use, FHIR is very likely to get delayed.
In the meantime, the healthcare industry needs true data-sharing, and we need it now. That is the only way to create the future we all want: one where data can be used and easily accessed to help both patients and providers – this can be done through Extract Systems. Virtually all modern software applications share data freely and securely as needed. It’s time that healthcare applications are built to do the same.
Please reach out to learn more about how we can help provide this future.
About the Author: Josh Nail
Josh is the Regional Business Development Manager at Extract with more than 18 years of experience in the healthcare marketplace. His healthcare background includes Revenue Cycle software solutions, HIM software solutions and EHR solutions. When not helping Health Systems improve patient care, increase provider satisfaction while delivering a return on investment you can find him Fly-fishing, Skiing or playing Golf.