Nearly 90 percent of hospitals are able to electronically share patient records with outside sources, according to the latest analysis by the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health Information Technology.
The ONC’s findings revealed that 88 percent of hospitals can electronically send patient summary of care records to sources outside their health system, while 74 percent of hospitals are able to receive patient records electronically from outside sources.
Though hospitals are also taking steps in becoming more interoperable, challenges still remain. Sixty-one percent of hospitals said they could find patient health information and 53 percent said they could integrate patient records from outside sources.
Just 41 percent hospitals said they can find patient health information and send, receive and integrate patient records from sources outside their health system, which are the four domains of interoperability.
In a blog post on the ONC’s website about the findings, authors Don Rucker, MD, and Talisha Searcy said “engaging in all four interoperability domains is critical to ensuring that clinicians have information they need at the point of care.”
The analysis also showed that 93 percent of non-federal acute care hospitals have adopted the ONC’s 2015 Edition Health IT Certification Criteria, which encourages hospitals to have greater interoperability and promotes health information exchange.
Danielle covers Clinical Innovation & Technology as a senior news writer for TriMed Media. Previously, she worked as a news reporter in northeast Missouri and earned a journalism degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She's also a huge fan of the Chicago Cubs, Bears and Bulls.