Providence Health System says it is the first healthcare system in the country to use the Clinical Data Exchange specifications developed by HL7’s Da Vinci Project to build an FHIR-based data-as-a-service platform.
WHY IT MATTERS
Providence — one of the largest U.S. health care systems with 52 hospitals and more than 900 clinics across seven states — says the new clinical data exchange technology it developed with Premera Blue Cross could be adopted by other providers to improve to alleviate the administrative and financial burden of the transition to value-based care.
The DaaS platform leverages HL7’s Member Attribution, Clinical Data Exchange and Bulk Implementation Guides – national data exchange standards that allow healthcare systems, payers and patients to seamlessly exchange patient records, treatment plans and critical information.
The industry-led Da Vinci Project developed ATR, CDex and Bulk FHIR through HL7 to improve data sharing between payers and providers.
“By using a national standard to close contract gaps and capture much-needed clinical data, we are empowering all stakeholders in their ecosystem to make more informed decisions, improve patient outcomes and improve the overall quality of care for our patients – who are always ready at the center of all our efforts,” said Michael Westover, vice president of population health informatics at Providence, in a statement.
The adoption of standardized and secure formats for clinical data exchange was vetted and approved not only by the provider’s and payer’s internal quality teams in September, but also by third-party auditors of healthcare effectiveness data and information sets, the health system said.
Scalable systems using FHIR standards, which define how healthcare information can be exchanged, are designed to eliminate time-consuming, error-prone processes and can help reduce the traditional inefficiencies of data exchange between providers and payers and increase the quality of care.
THE BIG TREND
The lack of standardization and lack of automation have been the main barriers to seamless clinical data sharing. Payers and service providers have long relied on sharing data in spreadsheets via secure file transfer or email, and then manually reviewing each record.
But getting started with the FHIR APIs is often an easier and faster way to access patient information, regardless of where the data comes from. It is not the only data exchange standard, which coexists with other standards that legacy HIT systems rely on.
For example, although the Trusted Exchange Framework and the Common Agreement – created by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology to create national connectivity of electronic health records – have an FHIR roadmap, this would reduce the variability in the use of other can increase standards.
Deepak Sadagopan and Duncan Weatherston, the FHIR co-chairs at Scale Taskforce, or FAST, say there are opportunities to join FHIR under TEFCA. They say rolling out FHIR standards nationwide in a coordinated manner will provide a more consistent path to addressing the costs of data sharing between payers and providers.
ON THE RECORD
“Interoperability is critical within value-based care, and FHIR integration enables healthcare organizations to share comprehensive clinical data that enables more accurate risk assessments, improves care coordination, and captures outcomes more effectively,” said Westover.
Andrea Fox is editor-in-chief of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.