Demonstrating the Value of the Health Information Exchange Through Qualitative Research

TOPEKA, Kan., March 1, 2018 (Newswire.com) - Groundbreaking original research developed by the Kansas Health Information Network (KHIN) and Diameter Health now demonstrates the incontestable value health information exchanges deliver by aggregating patient data across all healthcare providers into a longitudinal patient view.

Data gathered in the 2016-17 study validates the strategy promoted by MACRA/QPP to establish Qualified Clinical Data Registries (QCDRs) as new organizations which compute quality measures across providers. The study highlights the importance of using longitudinal patient data from providers to improve the accuracy and completeness of quality reporting. The research presents data from the KHIN health information exchange on primary care practices where more than 50,000 patients visited 214 separate care sites during the measurement period.

"This new research supports the use of health information exchange data in the computation of quality measures," said Laura McCrary, Ed.D, executive director of KHIN. "Our research findings indicate quality measure calculation is possible using interoperability standards to collect near real-time clinical data from disparate electronic health records (EHRs)."

She added, "KHIN can now compute quality measures across all providers treating a patient, resulting in higher-quality scores for providers and a more accurate, patient-centric view of the quality of care provided. This is in stark contrast to the current model which computes quality measures from only the data in the provider's EHR. Patients receive care from many different providers and this research suggests a more accurate assessment of the quality of care provided to a patient can be computed by using health information exchange data."

Diameter Health CEO Eric Rosow said, "The research results demonstrate how normalized, multi-sourced clinical data fuels a myriad of applications across the new healthcare ecosystem.The outcomes support quality reporting, value-based care and population health initiatives, and will contribute standard supplemental data for Payer HEDIS and Stars reporting."

McCrary and John D'Amore, president and chief strategy officer of Diameter Health, will discuss the research study as part of their presentation, "QPP/MIPS Success With Longitudinal Quality Measurement" at HIMSS 2018 Annual Conference on Friday, March 9, from 12-1 p.m. in the Las Vegas - Venetian Convention Center.

The session examines quality measures calculated using data from primary care practices' own EHRs and compares this with quality measures computed from the data in the KHIN health information exchange. The speakers demonstrate that complete clinical information is essential to accurately calculate both process measures, such as preventive screening and care outcomes measures.

About Kansas Health Information Network (KHIN)
KHIN's mission is to improve healthcare quality, coordination and efficiency through the exchange of health information at the point of care utilizing a secure electronic network provided by a collaboration of healthcare organizations. KHIN is a provider-led 501(c)3. Its goals are to ensure providers, patients and communities have long-term access to cost-effective, sustainable health information exchange aligned with costs distributed across a broad user base. It also encourages and removes barriers so communities and regions can focus on quality improvement, patient-centered medical home and entrepreneurial strategies that affect local health outcomes. For more information, visit www.khinonline.org.

About Diameter Health
Diameter Health enables clinical insight through the normalization, cleansing, de-duplication and enrichment of clinical data from across the care continuum. This creates a single, unified source of longitudinal structured patient information for improved care and actionable analytics. The Diameter Health platform empowers organizations that depend on multi-source data streams, such as Health Information Exchanges (HIEs), Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), health systems and health plans, to realize greater value from their data. For more information, visit www.diameterhealth.com or email us at [email protected].

CONTACT: 

Kansas Health Information Network Inc. 
Lisa Ignoto, Vice President, Marketing and Business Development
​[email protected], 800.232.2259
www.khinonline.org

Source: Kansas Health Information Network