Critical questions to ask your clinical data exchange partner

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Imagine you rented or bought a new house and, when setting up your utilities, the power company made you give them a pile of money, a physical credit card, checkbook, and access to your bank account. They’ll just take whatever is needed each month to cover your bill, and if you wanted to see your bill, you would need to pay them an additional $5 and get it mailed, faxed, or delivered on a CD.

This scenario sounds absurd, right? There’s no way this power company would have many happy customers.

Why the absurd scenario? Something similar can happen with healthcare data exchange. A vendor can say, “We’ll just send everything to requestors, and they’ll take only the data they need and are authorized to take.” An exchange vendor could also say, “Having an open pipeline of clinical data is too risky (agreed, by the way), so you need to filter the data before it leaves your electronic health record (EHR). Once you’ve provided us with the data that you’re OK sending, we’ll get it to the requestor.”

Continue to Journal of AHIMA to read the full article.

About Mike Arce

As Chief Administrative Officer, Mike utilizes his extensive healthcare IT experience to drive strategy, enhance scalability, and simplify healthcare for improved outcomes.