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KLAS: Clinician EHR interoperability needs are not being met

A KLAS report shows that just 44% of clinicians are satisfied with EHR integration, underscoring the need for better practices to enhance EHR interoperability.

Hannah Nelson
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Published: 11 Sep 2024

Despite EHR interoperability mandates, clinicians' data integration needs are still not being met, according to a recent KLAS Arch Collaborative report based on feedback from over 500,000 clinicians.

The KLAS Arch Collaborative is a group of healthcare organizations working to improve the EHR experience through surveys.

EHR integration remains a main pain point for interoperability, with only 44% of respondents reporting satisfaction with the level of integration their EHR provides with outside organizations.

The report asked over 33,000 clinicians about their experience using patient data from outside organizations. Approximately 47% of respondents indicated they cannot quickly find important patient information from outside organizations. An additional 47% of clinicians said they have to sift through duplicated data.

However, improved interoperability is possible. KLAS spoke to executive leaders from organizations with at least 70% of clinicians agreeing that external integration meets their needs. The report's authors compiled five best practices for improving health data interoperability based on these conversations.

Commit to sharing data

To improve health data integration, organizations should create an interoperability governance committee, dedicate resources toward interoperability and make a written plan for health data exchange.

Organizations should also connect to regional and national health information exchanges and national HIE networks like CommonWell, Carequality, eHealth Exchange and TEFCA-qualified health information networks.

Collaborate with core sharing partners

Stakeholders should collaborate with core regional partners to make data sharing more approachable and establish regular meetings. Further, organizations should establish standard practices for data sharing.

Focus on key health measures

Healthcare organizations should collaborate with data-sharing partners to meet mutually desired outcomes by focusing on the most important health metrics for shared populations.

Elevate end-user EHR awareness and proficiency

Stakeholders should provide clinicians with training on finding outside information for patient care.

The report indicated that 72% of clinicians who feel they received sufficient training on accessing outside data report their EHR has expected external integration. On the other hand, among clinicians who feel they are not well trained in accessing external data, only 26% agreed that their EHR has expected integration.

Involve EHR vendors as much as possible

Lastly, the report called for organizations to work with their EHR vendors to turn on data-sharing settings, standardize naming conventions/queries and map data elements across customer bases. Vendor interoperability offerings include Epic Happy Together, Oracle Health Seamless Exchange and MEDITECH Traverse.

Hannah Nelson has been covering news related to health information technology and health data interoperability since 2020.

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