Recent advancements in interoperability and data sharing have allowed a greater number of healthcare providers to exchange more data than ever before. However, these developments have also introduced a new set of challenges for hospitals, particularly in verifying patient identities to prevent medical errors and standardizing data formats.
During a webinar sponsored by Verato, panelists—including Michael Westover, Vice President of Peer Partnerships and Informatics at Providence, and Dr. Allen Hsiao, Chief Operations Officer for Yale New Haven Health System—discussed how their organizations are navigating these complex issues. The session was moderated by Jon Case, Vice President of Product Management at Verato.
Westover noted that a member list for value-based care contracts or government programs can include over 70 different formats for elements such as first name, last name, and date of birth. This discrepancy hampers the speed at which information can be retrieved and provided to organizations, including payers that require data in various formats. Additionally, data may be incomplete or duplicated.
Hsiao contrasted his early career, when patient data sharing was a laborious and time-consuming process, even within a single hospital, with today’s challenges of managing an overwhelming influx of data.
“Many information sources come from various systems. You’re trying to match names. We have a wonderful health information exchange in Connecticut, but patients often use nicknames or drop their middle names,” Hsiao explained. “All this matching is extremely difficult, especially when you aim to address population health.” He further emphasized, “Having a national patient identification number, like in other countries, for quality and safety reasons would be monumental in ensuring we have the correct information for the right patient.”
The discussion also highlighted the significance of the FHIR data standard for health information exchange and how the TEFCA initiative seeks to establish a standardized framework for data sharing, particularly for treatment use cases.
Furthermore, the conversation addressed the need for aligned incentives between payers and providers to facilitate data sharing, as well as the potential for patient-mediated data exchange to streamline processes.
The panel identified several critical discussion points, including:
- The widening gap between available data and real-world care delivery
- The complexities associated with managing hundreds of data sources and formats, including member lists
- The shift from information scarcity to data overflow
- Issues related to care management stemming from data interoperability
- The role of industry standards
- The impact of artificial intelligence
- How organizations can develop a business case for improving identity-based interoperability
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