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Introduction and Philanthropy Goals

Today in Health IT, we're discussing the class report on clinician interoperability needs not being met. My name is Kate Gamble. I'm Managing Editor at This Week Health, where we host a set of channels and events dedicated to transforming healthcare, one connection at a time.

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Discussing the CLASS Report on Interoperability

Today we're discussing the class report on clinician interop, clinician interoperability needs not being met.

And you're joined by me. So you're going to just say, Hey, I'm joined by Sarah. And blah, blah, blah. We need to add that to the script. Clearly. Yes. Okay. Ready? And today I'm joined by Sarah Richardson. So we're talking about the class report.

Challenges and Solutions in EHR Integration

We're talking about the latest class report, which showed that clinician needs for EHR interoperability are not being fully met, with only 44 percent of clinicians satisfied with current EHR integration.

Some of the common issues include difficulties in accessing external patient data and navigating through duplicated information. The report highlights best practices such as creating governance committees and collaborating with health information exchanges to improve data integration.

So first off, Sarah, what do you think of the findings? Does it surprise you at all? The findings don't surprise me because interoperability is still something we're dealing with. Every day, whether that's through policy, whether it's through different capabilities within our EMRs and the API connections we're making, the way our programmers are thinking about getting and accessing data.

What's super fascinating to me is that, okay, so 44 percent of clinicians are dissatisfied with interoperability. I would say that that number is equal or greater within even the IT realms or others that have to access information. The thing is we put the clinicians first because they're obviously the ones that are needing the information to take care of the patient, which is then at the core of our mission.

But being able to struggle to find the external data quickly, yes, it's hard to be able to bring all of these summaries together in a place that is thoughtful, that the physician can read through it and do that chart prep in time for the visit with the patient, which sometimes is 15 minutes, and so you don't have a whole lot of time in between these visits.

One of the things I think is really important though, is we talk about operational efficiency. We talk about the fact that poor interoperability is going to increase clinician frustration and that is going to impact workflow efficiency. It's key for us, whether we have a clinician title in our background or not, to workflows are like.

You know, we're here at an AI summit in DC with CIOs and CMIOs, and one of the questions I had to one of our practitioners was, Hey, beyond the ambient listening capability, where the physician can really design the workflow based on their needs. Does it ever go beyond that? And they're like, yeah, probably not in terms of the physician defining, you know, the EMR construction for their workflow, because so many other people get involved after it leaves the physicians.

So there's an element to all of that. Depends on the workflow. But then I think about our responsibility as CIOs. It's improving data integration across health systems for better decision making and patient care. So there's ways you can start to bring things together. We're here not Only in a vacuum with practitioners, we're here with our partners.

Those vendor partnerships and you work closely with them and your EMR vendor, you ensure that you're meeting integration needs, you're covering the regulatory requirements, and many of us rely today on the HIEs for best practices for sourcing and integrating Duplicate patient records. Um, but you think about whether that's your master, master patient index and everyone having a unique identifier to advance matching algorithms.

What I think is super interesting when you can leverage AI machine learning to identify and merge duplicate records, that helps you do attributions like demographics, medical history, and more. I will leave with this and I'm curious because you've been in this room with me over the last couple of days, is the data governance frameworks.

Having Established strong governance practices with dedicated data stewards and always monitoring whether or not you're duplicating records or other aspects. We've heard everything from, do you have a separate AI governance model? Where is risk compliance legal in these perspectives? Where's your CISO sitting in all of this?

What are some of the things that you've heard from the rooms over the last day or so that also lay into Physician satisfaction with having access to information.

One of our CIOs mentioned, , access being the biggest thing and it's so huge and it can't get lost in this. I think that's really important. And, you know, that's something that we're starting to see more focus on, which is encouraging, but yeah, that's still a huge challenge remains. And, you know, the last thing anyone wants to do is.

Make things more difficult for clinicians. So it's, it's really important that they keep putting out guidance and we keep sharing practices on how to improve this. I was really interested in those comments as well. We resounded around the room, but access is still the number one driver. So what I love about this though is we're talking about the ways that we can improve access.

And so we do get those patients into our hospitals, they can get to us for the care that they need. We have to make sure the clinicians Then have the data in front of them. So yes, is it important for us to be able to have the right governance structures and the right perspectives to make sure that we have interoperability needs being met?

Absolutely. I don't believe it's something we ever completely solve for. I do believe it's something we are consistently working towards because every march towards something positive is going to have a gain in one way or another, and we're going to learn from that. If we are including the physician in the conversation in a really thoughtful way, then there's that space that says, I hear you, I see you, and let's figure this out together.

And by the way, the responsibility of making that actually happen is still going to fall in the hands Of the CIO and their team. Yeah, absolutely. Couldn't agree more, including the positions is big, but as you said, doing it thoughtfully, doing it in the right way, doing it in a way so that they don't feel like there's another thing on their list, but instead

that they have that seat at the table. That was great. Thank you so much. Don't forget to share this podcast with a friend or colleague and thank you for listening. That's a wrap. Thank you.