The CMS’s vision to empower patients with access to their health information calls for the creation of healthcare IT solutions that can accrue and transfer Electronic Patient Health Information (ePHI) for better health decisions. As patients begin to use ePHI to make decisions for purchasing health plans, the relevance, cost, and accuracy of these plans will begin to shift in their favor. The following are the core functionalities that will influence care providers and HIT vendors in the years to come:
Care Providers
Complete Patient Picture: Care providers' capabilities to make faster care decisions will be more relevant and effective than ever before. Unbroken access to patient health information would vastly ramp up providers' understanding of patient health information.
Patient Identification: As patients become the center of the ePHI aggregation machinery, their unique identification would be under the limelight to protect patient health privacy. HIT systems would require mechanisms to confirm patient identity before the system can grant access to ePHI.
Proactive Sharing: Care providers would be forced to consistently ensure that they present patients with their ePHI in real-time. The effort would require software mechanisms to accomplish this feat without providers bearing the brunt of overwhelming manual labor to accomplish this task.
HIT Vendors
Universal Security: The custodians of ePHI(hospital portals) would need to adopt higher security standards to safeguard the privacy and integrity of the information. The onus would be on HIT vendors to integrate these mechanisms into the healthcare interoperability solutions they provide to care providers and payers.
Auditing Capabilities: HIT developers specializing in healthcare engineering services would need to insulate themselves from the risks of information blocking, audit trails, and tracking of ePHI. They must explore capabilities to trace the request-response loop. Such mechanisms would enable care providers to avoid ambiguity of user identities when queries are directed to request ePHI access.
Reducing Integration Cost: The CMS’s quest for the patient-centric ecosystem would lead to creating unified standards of ePHI exchange. As a result, HIT developers would need to push for a reduced cost of integrating new healthcare interoperability solutions with the existing components of the ecosystem.
Parting Words
HIT developers are the enablers of technology, and care providers are the influencers of patient behavior. In this equation of patient data exchange, third-party healthcare software developers are the dark horse that can help both parties trump the competition. Custom healthcare interoperability solutions and software systems are the conduits that facilitate ePHI storage and exchange.
At Nalashaa, we specialize in empowering care providers and HIT vendors with technology. We develop, customize, and modernize healthcare solutions to serve your requirements well. Some of the key services we provide that you would need in the coming days are as follow:
USCDI, FHIR 4.0 and SMART Implementation
CQM reporting to Comply with CMS Standard
Consent-Driven API Access
Secure Traceable Data Requests
Patient Identity Management
EPHI Governance
Drop us a line at [email protected] to connect with our healthcare experts. Learn how you can benefit from our services in the coming months!
