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Craig Newman (Jan 20 2020 at 14:01):The Public Health WG is having a discussion on how to measure the success of interoperability incentive programs (spurred on by a HIMSS blog post (https://www.himss.org/resources/determining-measures-success-interoperability)). We’ve set aside some time on the Jan 24th call to further talk about the topic. All are welcome to join.
Craig Newman (Jan 20 2020 at 14:03):Points to consider for possible feedback to HIMSS:
• Any assessment of overall interoperability success should include the impact on population health (public health) in addition to the benefits for providers and patients
• Measures should consider both the quantity of messages and the quality of messages
○ Just increasing the number of messages flowing will not be sufficient for maximal impact
§ More messages may not equate to improved experience if it means that more fragmented data is available and requiring reconciliation
§ More complex patterns of data flow (eg. from a provider to an HIE and then on to a public health agency) may complicate data analysis
□ Should a multi-hop exchange count as just a single exchange of data or multiple?
§ Many submitters to public health are still using batch submissions which are still valuable (albeit perhaps not as valuable as real time exchange) but harder to assess
○ The quality of the data is just as (or more) important
§ Quality can include accuracy, timeliness, completeness and standardization
§ Measuring the adoption of standard terminologies could be one way to assess improved quality
§ Proportion of discrete data (coded test results rather than a textual narrative, discrete name components, etc) may also be a useful metric
• A reduction in cost and time to onboard submitters is also a potential metric (with the ability to measure real world impact on public health programs)
• Other reductions in cost are also good indicators of success
○ Does it require fewer resources to data cleanse, deduplicate data, etc?
• Even with public health, there may be significant variation between programs
○ For example, electronic immunization reporting was well established prior to incentive programs but still saw a marked increase in data exchange while electronic case reporting has only developed recently and is not as widely implemented (but getting off the ground is often the hardest part)
• Ultimately, it is the impact on patients, providers and public health programs which should be the true measure of interoperability success
• Some assessment work is already happening in the public health space
○ Societies such as the American Immunization Registry Association (AIRA) may already be capturing data
○ Individual jurisdictions are already looking at assessing data quality in submitted data
Last updated: Mar 23 2020 at 00:02 UTC