What are Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources and Why Should You Adopt Them in Your Healthcare Practice?

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Healthcare providers are continually striving to meet compliance regulations and maintain the privacy of their clients. At the same time, they are looking for innovative ways to improve communication and collaboration among staff and between other providers to better understand patients’ health and treatment history.

To do this, many healthcare organizations use electronic health record (EHR) systems to become more efficient with receiving and transmitting healthcare information safely. Over 70% of physician offices have started implementing EHR systems in their practices as of 2019.

However, as impactful as EHR systems are, they aren’t uniform across multiple providers’ platforms. Even with the fast transmission of records, the data from these records isn’t as accessible to physicians as it could be. Converting to normalized interoperability standards in healthcare among differing providers could be the key.

The Importance of Interoperability Standards in Healthcare

Interoperability resources help healthcare providers use technology as a way to easily share data between each other’s systems in a uniform, accessible manner. This transfer of data allows providers to have a comprehensive view of the patient’s medical history — instead of just a snapshot from requested records — and ensures that they are providing the best possible care.

Without interoperability standards in healthcare, providers may not have access to all of the relevant information about their patients, which could lead to obstacles in providing the necessary care. Limited patient data can have dire consequences for a patient’s health and safety.

Patient data can be standardized through best interoperability practices to not only provide the necessary medical record information, but the patient’s full story. Having data presented to medical providers in an efficient, user-friendly way only makes the patient experience richer and more informative.

What is FHIR?

Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) are designed to standardize data formats to more efficiently transfer and receive electronic health records and make that data usable.

Interoperability standards in healthcare define the structure of where data should live and how it should look. This gives developers the freedom to create internet-based apps that can access and exchange data from disparate EHR systems.

The Benefits of FHIR

Using FHIR makes it easier for different providers’ EHR systems to communicate with each other. As stated before, this allows medical professionals to have a more complete view of the patient’s health history and treatment, eliminating silos between a patient’s various providers. FHIR standardizes and streamlines all the data a patient has for other doctors requesting medical records.

Interoperability practices help to ensure that patient data is accurate and consistent across providers. This can help to avoid errors in care and treatment. One out of every five hospitals reported that patients were harmed because of data mismatches in medical records.

Adopting interoperability practices also helps to support the growth of new and innovative health care applications. By making it easier for developers to access and exchange data from different EHR systems, they are able to create new and innovative apps that can improve the quality of care for patients.

Stasmayer Helps Medical Professionals Adopt New Technology with Patients in Mind

In the healthcare industry, the first priority is to maintain the highest standards of care and compliance while being up-to-date with the latest changes and technology advancements. Managed IT services from Stasmayer help your company maintain proper compliance to give you peace of mind. Our team is passionate about strategically using technology to enhance the patient experience. 

Contact us today to ensure your medical practice is operating productively and safely for your patients!

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