Commentary: A 4-step Approach To Interoperability

A physician orders a lab test but cannot receive results back directly in the practice’s electronic health record (EHR). A patient sees a specialist who quickly schedules surgery without the knowledge of the primary care provider. These are the challenges our industry must solve in order to effectively transition into value-based reimbursement models.

While Meaningful Use is an important step for enabling greater adoption of EHRs, it doesn’t provide specifics around the functional use of this data across multiple platforms to improve care. That’s why total system interoperability and data liquidity must be our industry’s ultimate goals. Real-time data must simultaneously be “pushed” and “pulled” in the right ways to create shared insight for every provider involved in a patient’s care.

This is true regardless of the type of model — whether it’s an accountable care organization, a clinically integrated network or a patient-centered medical home...