Introduction:
The ability to seamlessly exchange data among disparate healthcare information systems has long been recognized as a key outcome in the adoption of health information and technology by healthcare stakeholders.
The benefits of data interoperability across providers, health systems, and care settings include, but are not limited to:
- Creating more efficient and effective healthcare delivery, thereby reducing the cost of care while improving outcomes.
- Facilitating access to, and retrieval of, clinical data to provide safe, timely and equitable patient-centered care.
- Enabling improved workflows and provider collaboration, improving the security and accuracy of data used in care coordination, and ultimately making the right data available at the right time to the right people.
However, the interoperability discussion has historically focused on hospital-to-hospital data exchange. While important, this focus has made it more difficult to gauge the progress of data exchange between other care settings such as long-term and post-acute care, or LTPAC, organizations.
In view of the need to focus on data interoperability between LTPAC organizations and their acute partners, the HIMSS LTPAC Committee endorsed an effort to document the experiences of U.S.-based cohorts with projects related to data sharing. The objective for this study was to call attention to relevant examples in the real-world in order to promote expanded integration and coordination among stakeholders. During this process, we document successes realized, obstacles faced and lessons learned when sharing data during transitions of care between acute to LTPAC settings.
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