Health information exchange

Health information exchange (HIE) is the mobilization of health care information electronically across organizations within a region, community or hospital system. Participants in data exchange are called in the aggregate Health Information Networks (HIN). In practice, the term HIE may also refer to the health information organization (HIO) that facilitates the exchange. HIE provides the capability to electronically move clinical information among different health care information systems. The goal of HIE is to facilitate access to and retrieval of clinical data to provide safer and more timely, efficient, effective, and equitable patient-centered care which may also be useful to public health authorities in analyses of the health of the population. HIE systems facilitate the efforts of physicians and clinicians to meet high standards of patient care through electronic participation in a patient's continuity of care with multiple providers. Secondary health care provider benefits include reduced expenses associated with: the manual printing, scanning and faxing of documents, including paper and ink costs, as well as the maintenance of associated office machinery the physical mailing of patient charts and records, and phone communication to verify delivery of traditional communications, referrals, and test results the time and effort involved in recovering missing patient information, including any duplicate tests required to recover such information According to an internal study at Sushoo Health Information Exchange, the current method of exchanging patients' health information accounts for approximately $ of expenses annually for a single-clinician practice. Formal organizations are now emerging to provide both form and function for health information exchange efforts, both on independent and governmental or regional levels. These organizations are, in many cases, enabled and supported financially by statewide health information exchange grants from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.