Comments by the lead author – Dr. Emily Gill from Opōtiki

Take-away

People who live in rural areas have poorer health than their urban counterparts, and for those with multiple, complex medical needs, this is impacted by health IT systems.  This research suggests US rural settings may contend with more unaffiliated electronic health records (EHRs a.k.a. PMSs), than urban settings.  The equivalent in NZ is that rural areas that border between DHBs are more likely to see patients from outside their own DHB, and this poses challenges of accessing and exchanging electronic information (e.g., electronic referrals) with unaffiliated DHBs.  Policy regulations should require that health information be exchanged between all health services, from pharmacy to private hospital to allied health providers, in a way that is ‘useable’ (e.g., user-friendly; without the need to login to multiple other platforms).  An important way to evaluate whether health IT systems are improving health is to focus on care coordination activities: for patients who see multiple health providers due to their complex, chronic needs, how easily can the patient and all the health providers involved access and know pertinent health information, especially when changes are occurring frequently? 

More details:

To provide coordinated care, health information needs to be frequently transferred across settings such as primary care clinics, acute care hospitals, and community health services. The U.S. government made a major financial investment in health information technology with the aim of improving improve care coordination and provided incentives for healthcare organizations to electronically exchange information in a more efficient and accurate process.  Given the increased health needs of the rural population, this research project sought to understand the experiences of healthcare providers in exchanging information during or in response to a transfer of care.

The interviews and surveys conducted through this research described numerous gaps between the necessary care coordination activities for patients with complex needs and the capacity for technology to facilitate the process. Healthcare professionals described low confidence in the integrity of the information they receive, and the effort required to gather needed information, including challenges with arranging real-time communication with other providers caring for the same patient.  Providers described care plans, a potentially useful tool in care coordination, as being regulated to such an extent that they are not used in routine decision making. In exchanging information between organizations using different Electronic Health Records (EHRs), most systems could not automatically incorporate the new information into the existing patient record. This lack of interoperability explains the large quantities of information the providers described faxing and scanning in.  Finally, rural healthcare professionals described the compounding impact of poverty on coordinating care for their patients. Not having transportation to specialist appointments; being geographically located between multiple larger health systems, which amplifies the number of external EHR systems in use; and the lack of access to specialty services all accentuate the challenges of information exchange during care transitions.

Both the U.S. and New Zealand should continue to focus on policy that drives the development of technology standards for how health information is exchanged.  In addition to promoting EHR systems that can receive and incorporate information automatically, standards should guide the usability of digital health data, and how it is aggregated across settings to create useful longitudinal care plans. Policy in both countries should encourage further research to define meaningful measures of how coordination technology tools impact population health.