Privacy, Sustainability, Funding Top 3 Pain Points in HIE

The Washington, D.C.-based National eHealth Collaborative (NeHC) announced the results of its first ever Stakeholder Survey, identifying privacy and security, sustainability and funding as the top three pain points in health information exchange (HIE). NeHC established this survey initiative in December 2010 to encourage stakeholders across a wide range of specialties to contribute their suggestions on major concerns in health information exchange. NeHC’s Stakeholder Survey also solicited opinions on the issues that are in greatest need of information distribution or are best primed for collaborative projects to develop innovative solutions.

NeHC’s call for comment elicited responses from a fairly balanced distribution of stakeholder interests. Participants spanned the private and public sectors.

Among the questions answered in the survey, respondent data strongly suggested that a number of concerns and opinions are shared widely across the stakeholder spectrum:

• The issues that over 80% of stakeholders agreed were most likely to potentially derail health information exchange were identified as:
o Privacy and Security: 46%
o Sustainability: 21%
o Funding: 15%

• More than 60% of the issues in HIE causing the greatest concern were in three areas:
o Privacy and Security: 30%
o Adoption and Use: 16%
o Sustainability: 14%

• More than 60% of stakeholders indicated that the most-requested issues on which they would like to receive regular updates due to the constantly-changing environment in HIE are:
o Governance: 23%
o Privacy and Security: 19%
o Legislative Barriers and Regulations: 19%

• The solutions that 60% of stakeholders indicated that they were most willing to collaborate on are:
o Adoption and Use: 21%
o Privacy and Security: 20%
o Governance: 19%