The inability to easily exchange medical data is holding back healthcare improvements and innovation. Thankfully there has been concerted effort recently from governments, vendors, standards bodies, and healthcare organizations to address this. Key to this effort is a standardized way to measure our interoperability progress (or lack thereof). The Healthcare Leadership Council and other leading organizations have created a new measurement framework to address this gap.
Gauging our Progress
Healthcare’s lack of interoperability wastes time, funds, and resources across the entire ecosystem. It mans that every interaction between providers, payers, researchers, public health authorities, and patients comes with an unwanted and unnecessary friction. To overcome that friction requires specialized applications, development resources, or old-fashioned workarounds like printouts, CD-ROMs, and faxes.
Achieving interoperability means reducing costs and creating a more friction-free ecosystem.
The question is: how well are we doing in achieving that goal? Should we pat ourselves on the back for what we have achieved in the past 12 months? Or do we need to redouble our efforts because of the lack of progress we made? Without a framework to gauge our progress, we have no idea.
There is an old adage that I believe applies to healthcare’s interoperability challenge : What gets measured gets done. We cannot expect to make progress unless we know where we are and how far we still need to go.
Interoperability Measures
In a joint paper entitled “Opportunities for Private Sector Measures to Inform and Advance Interoperability Policy”, the Healthcare Leadership Council and UCSF proposed a set of measures to fill the interoperability measurement void.
The paper identifies numerous measurement gaps and proposes metrics that could be used to fill them. For example:
Other proposed measures include:
- Count of benefits-based prescription pricing records delivered at the point of prescribing
- Count of links to clinical document sources shared across systems
- Count of problems, medications, and allergies reconciled into local patient records after receiving data from other healthcare organization
The last measure – counting the problems, medications and allergies reconciled – is my personal favorite. It is exactly the kind of outcomes-based metric that we need. The point of having health data interoperable is so that patients benefit from better, smoother care. Identifying and reconciling problems, medications, and allergies reduces preventable ED visits. By measuring this, the industry can focus on improving it.
Glass Half-Empty?
I had the opportunity to moderate a panel of experts where we discussed the current state of interoperability. The panel was hosted by Surescripts and featured:
- Mary Grealy, President of Healthcare Leadership Council
- Tom Skelton, Chief Executive Officer at Surescripts
- Ashok Chennuru, Chief Data and Analytics Officer at Anthem
- Cris Ross, CIO at Mayo Clinic
- Matt Swain, Chief of Staff at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT
One of the questions posed to the panel was whether we would find ourselves further ahead in our interoperability journey than we give ourselves credit for. The question comes from the fact that the media (myself included) tend to portray progress as slow and downplaying interoperability success.
In general, the panel believed we are making progress, but we still have a long way to go.
At the start of the discussion, Skelton presented some key numbers from the Surescripts 2021 National Progress Report including:
- 89 million healthcare professionals process over 20 billion transactions on the SureScripts network
- 81% increase in utilization of clinical direct messaging
He went on to describe the current state of interoperability this way: “I think we built a fabulous foundation and we’re in a good position to move forward from here. What we’re starting to see is an innovation ecosystem and this is really where the patient is going to get the greatest benefit. This is where we can move from retrospectively or viewing data retrospectively and starting to think about things prospectively and really, truly managing the health of Americans.”
“I think it’s been pretty remarkable [how we have done on interoperability], but that’s not the point,” added Ross. “The point is our healthcare system is badly broken. We don’t really have a handle on how we’re going to deal with cost reduction and health improvement. Interoperability, isn’t the only tool that’s going to fix that problem, but it’s a really important tool in the toolbox.”
“The idea [of measuring ourselves] wasn’t to try and prove that we were done or that we were in the home stretch,” said Skelton. “It’s about proving that we’re constantly better than the day before. That every day there is progress being made. While the list may not be complete and comprehensive, it is a good and strong framework for cross section of the industry. It will start to serve as a North Star.”
Importance of Sharing
During the panel, Swain highlighted how important it is for healthcare organizations to share their successes so that others can learn from them: “I loved to see the report that you all just published, that showed outcomes because that’s what we’re truly interested in. At ONC we’d love to see that work, but we also love to see that it gets published so we can learn from it. We’re a very data driven organization, and there are others in the healthcare system who could learn from those lessons too.”
For a unique perspective on the panel, check out this wonderful summary from Mary Grealy.
Watch the video of the panel discussion to learn:
- Which Disney character is each panelist’s favorite
- Examples of successful interoperability projects and how we might replicate them
- Why the ONC has been tracking patient portal usage over the past couple of years
- How Anthem is taking a serious run at addressing health equity with interoperability as a first necessary step
Learn more about Surescripts: https://surescripts.com/
Learn more about the Healthcare Leadership Council: https://www.hlc.org/
Listen and subscribe to the Healthcare IT Today Interviews Podcast to hear all the latest insights from experts in healthcare IT.
And for an exclusive look at our top stories, subscribe to our newsletter.
Surescripts is a proud sponsor of Healthcare Scene.
