Hospitals Creating Their Own Networks
August 18th, 2008 by Jon Mertz
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There used to be a saying that “all politics is local,” meaning that how to get elected or get things done was at the local level. This was the idea behind a post several months ago entitled All Healthcare Integration is Local. While there are many grand initiatives happening (from IHE to HIEs to RHIOs, etc.), the actual integration work is happening with several leading health care entities. The local approach is taking hold with hospitals and their efforts to connect to the referring physician community without a RHIO-type effort.
In a recent Health Data Management article entitled The Hospital as the Network Hub, the telling statement is: “The hotbed of networking activity in health care today involves hospitals linking with their referring physicians, not broader RHIOs or health information exchanges…”
The motivation for hospitals to implement their own networks is described as:
- Competitive pressures: Make it easy for community physicians to refer patients and access data.
- Enhance reputation: Focus on specialty physicians - cardiology or oncology - to dominate local market niches.
- Timing: Now is better than later… can’t afford to wait for community-wide HIE initiatives.
Hospitals are taking advantage of the Stark Law changesand are hosting applications (such as EMRs) for their referring physician community. In a hosted environment, providing the connectivity and electronic exchanges for patient data becomes a more manageable approach than larger scale HIE initiatives.
RHIOs and HIEs will still play a role in the longer term, larger picture approach. However, the local approach to healthcare integration is happening now (as it should), and it is working.
Last 5 posts by Jon Mertz
- Insights - Outpatient Imaging Center CIO - October 17th, 2008
- The Road to EMR Interoperability - October 16th, 2008
- Hospitals Creating Their Own Networks - August 18th, 2008
- Healthcare Unbound Conference Insights - July 15th, 2008
- Electronic Medical Record Perspectives Grow - June 27th, 2008
The same thing (hospitals being a hub in establishing communications with the referring physicians, mostly GPs) can be seen in various european countries.
In the beginning the data was made available using web-based solutions. This doesn’t enable the referring physician to copy any data in their own medical records application; and it forces a physicians that refer to multiple hospitals to familiarize themselves with the look and feel of multiple web based applications.
In the UK and the Netherlands we’ve seen that this is a phase which lasts for a couple of years - at which time the data is communicated electronically (using messages/documents) in both directions. Web-based solutions provide one with the time necessary to create an infrastructure for the exchange of structured electronic data.