Health Information Exchange (HIE)
Christine Broger

Health Information Process with Lab (HIT 141)
Sonja Ross

February 12, 2012

Health Information Exchange (HIE) refers to the process of reliable and interoperable electronic health-related information sharing conducted in a manner that protects the confidentiality, privacy, and security of the information. The development of widespread HIEs is quickly becoming a reality. Health Information Organizations (HIOs) are the organizations that oversee HIE. For HIOs to function, they must have the capability to employ nationally recognized standards to enable interoperability, security and confidentiality, and to ensure authorization of those who access the information.
The HIE …show more content…

Transmitting patient data electronically without attending to the business processes surrounding data capture, translation, and transmission has the potential to increase patient risks and healthcare costs. Data accessibility, reliability, and accuracy are critical factors in obtaining the trust of stakeholders, including consumers, and in sustaining long-term data exchange on a large scale. Accordingly, it is imperative for regional health information organizations (RHIOs) to hard-wire patient safety and quality of care measures into the HIE’s processes and systems.
Patient medical records are a lot like castaways. Most are trapped in groups on small, isolated desert islands, the islands being proprietary medical systems, pharmacy software, and old-fashioned filing cabinets. A closed EHR system that only works at one particular practice could help bring order to chaotic paper filing at that office. But it would be more useful, the argument goes, if the system could integrate data and health records from other practice’s EHR systems via an HIE. Some hospitals are putting emergency room (ER) patients' beds in the hallways of the rest of the hospital as a means of motivating staff members to hasten the admission process.
Additionally, staff members were more apt to quickly admit these patients because the entire hospital becomes involved in the