One of the virtues of a large electronic health record like Practice Fusion is that all of the records in the system follow the same set of rules so that information can move easily and reliably from doctor to doctor or can be amalgamated and analyzed for research. The following news article illustrates how important that is:
“Friday, July 30, 2010: When the Veterans Affairs and Defense departments began testing health information sharing for their joint virtual lifetime electronic record (VLER) project, they could not initially exchange patient data successfully using the very standards specified by the Office of the National Coordinator for health record formatting.
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“Dr. Doug Fridsma, acting director of ONC’s standards and interoperability office, used the experience of VA and DOD as an example of the trickiness of getting standards right so healthcare providers can exchange health information properly.”
Two agencies of the Federal Government encountered an electronic Tower of Babel. Despite the government’s best efforts at setting standards, it will be difficult to realize true interoperability – that’s tech talk for two IT systems working together – between systems from more than 200 EHR vendors.
Practice Fusion and the doctors who use it avoid that problem.
Hal Amens is a senior management consultant with experience in the design and implementation of computer system with a particular emphasis on “workability.” He is also a Practice Fusion Certified Consultant.
