88% of Hospitals Use Health Data Exchange, ONC Interoperability Report Finds
HIEs and interface connections with EHRs were the most used interoperability methods for health data exchange in 2021.
Interoperability continues to improve, with 88 percent of hospitals participating in electronic health data exchange as of 2021, according to an ONC data brief based on the AHA Information Technology (IT) Supplement to the AHA Annual Survey.
Since 2017, the number of hospitals engaged in integrating patient health data into EHRs has grown 40 percent, with around three-quarters of hospitals engaging in this activity in 2021.
Additionally, rural and small hospitals’ usage of information received electronically from outside sources increased at twice the rate of hospitals nationally (over 40 percent vs. over 20 percent) between 2017 and 2021.
Rural and small hospitals’ rates of having patient information available at the point of care increased by 26 percent from 2017 to 2021, reaching 48 percent.
However, these less-resourced hospitals have yet to catch up with the national rate of 62 percent of hospitals using health data from outside sources, indicating the need to continue addressing barriers to health information access.
Hospitals’ rapid growth in interoperability could be attributed partially to the implementation of health IT provisions from the ONC Cures Act Final Rule and the adoption of 2015 Edition certified technology. Nearly 90 percent of hospitals have adopted 2015 Edition certified health IT.
The data brief found that hospitals continued to use various health data exchange methods.
Health information exchanges (HIEs) and interface connections with EHRs were the most used methods for finding patient health information.
About 4 in 10 hospitals continued to participate in multiple networks, indicating possible challenges to data sharing across networks and reinforcing the need for joining numerous networks.
Policy activities that support cross-network exchange, such as the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA), will help reduce the number of different networks and HIE methods that hospitals need to use. TEFCA aims to establish a universal policy and technical floor for interoperability and simplify connectivity for organizations to exchange health information securely.
Additionally, with 74 percent of hospitals reporting the ability to integrate information into their EHRs in 2021, ONC officials noted that current policy efforts could increase the value of integration.
For instance, ONC took recent actions to improve the data quality from external sources by advancing the use of specific data elements, such as through the United States Core Data for Interoperability (USCDI) and the required use of application programming interface (API) technology.
“Efforts such as these should help ensure that information is available, integrated into the EHR, and used at the point of care – all of which have further room for improvement and will ultimately drive improvements in care and secondary use of data, such as for research,” ONC officials wrote.