AMIA Annu Symp Proc. 2015 Nov 05;2015:1260-8. eCollection 2015.
AMIA ... Annual Symposium proceedings. AMIA Symposium
Joshua R Vest, Erika Abramson
PMID: 26958266 PMCID: PMC4765592
Health information exchange (HIE) systems facilitate access to patient information for a variety of health care organizations, end users, and clinical and organizational goals. While a complex intervention, organizations' usage of HIE is often conceptualized and measured narrowly. We sought to provide greater specificity to the concept of HIE as an intervention by formulating a typology of organizational HIE usage. We interviewed representatives of a regional health information organization and health care organizations actively using HIE information to change patient utilization and costs. The resultant typology includes three dimensions: user role, usage initiation, and patient set. This approach to categorizing how health care organizations are actually applying HIE information to clinical and business tasks provides greater clarity about HIE as an intervention and helps elucidate the conceptual linkage between HIE an organizational and patient outcomes.