Why practices are confronting difficulties to exchange patient records

Medical record administrators are sustaining to have difficulties exchanging patient records with other providers.

Data exchange of patient records is specifically difficult when getting providers are not on the same electronic health records (EHRs) as the sender, in accordance to results of a survey conducted in the month of January by Black Book Research, which discovered that more than 40% of responding administrators admitted to record exchange challenges.

Those mixed outcomes come even though vendors of EHRs are reconfiguring systems to better enable data exchange. The survey also measured how well respondents’ electronic health records (EHRs) vendors are optimizing EHRs, including the use of the emerging FHIR interoperability standard, to better support HIE.

“As inpatient agencies execute optimized EHR software that uses FHIR to advance interoperability and HIE, the whole provider network gains the data exchanging functionality to better serve sufferers,” claims Doug Brown, managing partner at Black Book. “Physician groups continue to lack the financial and technical expertise to adopt complex EHRs which are necessary to attain higher reimbursements by public and private payers.”

• 70% of responding hospitals do not use patient records information outside of their own EHR because information from external providers isn’t made available in the EHR workflow.


• 22% of records administrators say transferred patient information isn’t presented in a usable format.


• 21% of hospital-based physicians say the data they view can’t be trusted for precision when sent between disparate information systems.

In all, more than 80% of independent physicians in the survey aren’t confident of having the technology and skills to manage the financial risk of quality payment programs.

Black Book also inquired how providers feel about their EHR vendor. Those ranked greatest are: Evident CPSI for hospitals with fewer than hundred beds; Cerner for community hospitals with 101-250 beds; Allscripts for facilities with more than 250 beds; and Cerner for hospital chains and integrated delivery systems.