Altamonte Springs, Fla.-based Adventist Health's chief transformation officer and population health services CMO Nishant Anand, MD, believes problems with EHR interoperability issues are hindering the transition to value-based care, EHRIntelligence reports.
Dr. Anand delivered testimony on how interoperability issues impede the transition to value-based care during a hearing for the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health Sept. 13.
Here are five takeaways:
1. Systems should consistently implement application programming interface to overcome interoperability barriers and speed up the transition to value-based care, Dr. Anand said.
2. Interoperability problems make participation in value-based arrangements difficult, and they complicate patient access to information, he argued.
3. Dr. Anand believes interoperability improvement efforts should take a patient-centric approach.
4. He cited the absence of a national patient identifier and the lack of competition within the EHR marketplace as barriers to advancing interoperability.
5. Dr. Anand offered five recommendations to address these problems:
- Designate an open application programming interface standard for EHR systems.
- Ensure providers can connect any third-party application to their EHR system.
- Ensure APIs support bulk data extract and real-time data update and exchange.
- Prevent EHR vendors from putting limits on data extracted or the frequency of data requests.
- Require certified EHR vendors to disclose all known material limitations.
"As patients navigate throughout the continuum of care — through physician offices, hospitals, same-day surgery centers or community clinics — their records should be easily transferable between all organizations. In an ideal state of interoperability, patients would not be placed under the burden of having to seek their medical records from different providers," Dr. Anand said.
