Healthcare Executive - September/October 2013 - 18

than a basic exchange of information. The real challenge
is coordinating between the specialist, primary care provider and hospital.”

“In 2013, people are now focusing on
the importance of making clinical
information available to physicians,
patients and their families.”
— Christina Beach Thielst, FACHE
Tower Strategies

For HIEs to work, the challenge won’t be information
exchanging among hospitals, nursing homes and other
organizations but the process of exchange with independent physician practices. “When hospitals send basic
patient information between each other such as lab
results, they’re probably not going to have any issues with
the transmission,” says Robertson. “But coordinating care
through an independent primary care physician becomes
trickier. Now they have to identify gaps in care and see
what kind of factor they are having with, for example, a
diabetes management program. There’s much more
patient detail required for these physicians to hit their
quality goals, and that information is a lot more difficult

Ask the Expert
Have a question on this topic? Continue the discussion on the ACHE Message Board. Jan Lee, MD,
executive director, Delaware Health Information
Network, will take your questions on ACHE’s
Message Board from Sept. 1 to Oct. 1. Responses
will be posted each Monday. Visit ache.org/
MessageBoard to post your question and view
her response. When you post your question, please
title the subject “HE Mag/Sept/Oct/Technology
[question here].”

Healthcare Executive
SEPT/oCT 2013

If a physician practice isn’t using an HIE or on the same
EHR system, exchanging information is difficult because
two different EHR systems have trouble “talking” to each
other. “And the primary care physician may not have the
money to invest in an HIE and pay for the level of integration required,” says Robertson. “Ultimately, getting
back to the discussion of ACos becomes important
because as they are developed, ACos will help fund the
technology infrastructure to make integration possible, of
which HIE is a critical component.”
Though many hospitals do not participate in HIEs
because their states don’t have an HIE established, there
are efforts under way to create a national system. And
Indiana University Health North Hospital’s Goble says
that has to be the format for coordinated care.
“A patient shouldn’t be the victim of lack of coordinated care
because hospitals don’t want to share information with competitors,” he says. “We have to do this with the patient in
mind and not our own positions. The information is still the
patient’s, and we owe it to the patient to securely share it.”
John M. Buell is a writer with Healthcare Executive.

Related Resources
American College of Healthcare Executives
• Health Informatics: A Systems Perspective. Gordon
D. Brown, PhD, Timothy B. Patrick, PhD, Kalyan S.
Pasupathy, PhD. Association of University
Programs in Health Administration/Health
Administration Press, 2012. Visit ache.org/HAP.
• “Health Information Confidentiality.” ACHE
Ethical Policy Statement, revised November
2012. Visit ache.org/policy/Hiconf.cfm.
Healthcare Information and Management
Systems Society
• Find health information exchange toolkits,
podcasts and more. Visit himss.org/library/
health-information-exchange.

Healthcare Executive - September/October 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Healthcare Executive - September/October 2013