Trend: Hospitals, health systems building their own networks

For years now, hospitals have struggled to create health information exchanges that not only served some broad community purpose, but also hooked up their physicians with their central systems. Unfortunately, the process has been a long one, as RHIOs/HIEs have been slow to take off, dogged by financial and administrative obstacles. However, of late it appears that hospitals and health systems are beginning to take matters into their own hands.

Increasingly, systems and individual hospitals are building their own hospital-centered networks, connecting their facilities with local doctors rather than wait for regional or statewide health data networking efforts to get their acts together. While some facilities allow read-only access to hospital data, it's still a start, and a tangible result in markets where RHIOs haven't actually been launched. A growing percentage of hospitals, meanwhile, are serving as application service providers, giving their doctors remote access to outpatient records via the web.

Hospitals and health systems are increasingly being pressured to build their own networks as they face greater pressure to capture their referrals in a brutally-competitive marketplace. It's particularly important for hospitals to link up with specialists in key areas, such as cardiology and oncology, to build their reputation as a "center of excellence," notes Michael Mytych of Health Information Consulting LLC. Besides, it makes sense to link up with a physician's office if you're going to supply them with an EMR anyway, which many systems are of course doing these days.

To learn more about this trend:
- read this Health Data Management article

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