In a whitepaper released this week, Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Thomson Reuters has outlined the ten best practices for implementing statewide health information exchange (HIE) programs. As state officials gear up to put programs in place, researchers advise the following:
Among the ten best practices for building a statewide HIE, Thomson Reuters recommends the following:
- Define a meaningful pilot that meets the needs of local stakeholders
- Rather than setting overly ambitious goals, get a small program up and running and learn from mistakes
- Involve physicians and clinicians at the outset to determine what will be most beneficial on the frontlines where patients are served
- Avoid the trap of tweaking the grand design toward perfection at the expense of launching something manageable
- Provide physicians with as many different types of information from as many different sources as possible
- Addressing the clinical use case is the most direct path to demonstrating the value of the HIE
- Avoid using an opt-in consent policy, as these environments have been shown to impede patient participation
- Utilize embedded analytic capabilities that deliver an intelligent presentation of information
- Build analytics into the system at the start-up
- Focus on the goal of providing the infrastructure to deliver data as efficiently as possible rather than trying to become the resident education and electronic records provider.
For more information, visit http://interest.healthcare.thomsonreuters.com/content/HIEWhitepaper.
