4 PHI tips for HIEs

One of the biggest current obstacles to health information exchanges (HIEs) is the rather thorny matter of consent to data sharing.

Patients are not the only wary ones, either. Providers often see patient protected health information (PHI) as a competitive advantage, and something they are reluctant to share with other hospitals or physician practices. Opt-in or opt-out, how can HIEs convince patients and providers to consent to data sharing?

At least one health-centric IT consultancy maintains that is not actually the best question to be asking.

“Whether an opt-in or opt-out model is chosen … the adoption of HIE is less about which model is right for its participants and more about which model will best serve its population,” according to a white paper released by Perficient on Tuesday.

Aiming to help HIEs better understand how to share PHI, Perficient suggests four tactics in the white paper. Those are:

1. Review state laws and regulations. Health information exchanges need to consider state rules from the outset, as no national standard solution exists for establishing an HIE. And those rules vary from state to state.

2. Establish Trust. Whether you permit patients to opt in or opt out, ther issue is “how much information should be shared within the exchange and with whom it is shared,” Perficient officials wrote.

3. Add Value. The HIE “comes at a great cost” to all participants, so it’s necessary to “ensure up front that the expectations and needs of those involved are documented and incorporated into the development of the HIE,” Perficient advised.

4. Privacy and Confidentiality Issues. Patient consent is viewed as perhaps the trickiest issue of them all. Indeed, “patients have consistently listed privacy and confidentiality issues as their top concern with HIE,” the white paper noted, explaining that the personal information itself, as well as the reason for exchanging PHI, can potentially sway patients one way or the other.

Whether or not a particular HIE will survive and thrive “is wholeheartedly dependent upon how providers work with patients to build trust and buy in, and the ability of the HIE to add value to participating organizations, patients and the community,” Perficient concluded in the report, titled "Reap the rewards of HIE with patient, organization, and community opt-in and opt-out."