Vaishali Patel
- Health IT Buzz
- Articles by: Vaishali Patel
Vaishali Patel's Latest Blog Posts
Electronic Public Health Reporting among Hospitals & Physicians in the Year Prior to the Pandemic: Implications for Health Equity & Pandemic Response
Vaishali Patel | August 18, 2022
The pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic revealed gaps in the nation’s public health infrastructure that pose challenges to effective communication between health care providers and public health agencies. According to ONC analyses of nationally representative survey data from hospitals and physicians collected in 2019, over 70% of hospitals experienced at least one major challenge with electronic public health reporting and less than 1 in 5 primary care physicians—and about a quarter of pediatric and internal medicine primary care physicians—reported electronically exchanging data with public health agencies.
Read Full Post.Shining a Light on FHIR Implementation: Progress Toward Publishing FHIR Endpoints
Vaishali Patel | February 1, 2022
Using APIs “without Special Effort”
The ONC’s Cures Act Final Rule (Cures Rule) supports patients’ and providers’ access to electronic health information (EHI) through Health Level Seven (HL7®) Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR®) application programming interfaces (APIs). FHIR is ready for prime-time and the Cures Rule requires certain developers of certified health IT to provide a certified, FHIR API to their customer base by December 31, 2022.
Read Full Post.Harnessing Electronic Health Data in the Palm of Your Hand: New Survey Data Shows Increasing Availability of Patient-Facing APIs and Early Uptake by Patients
Vaishali Patel | November 17, 2021
More and more individuals are using digital data to make informed decisions about their health. Whether it be health information collected by wearable devices or lab test results in a patient portal, individuals can now access, share, and use electronic health data to manage their health needs. The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the importance of individuals taking a proactive approach to accessing to their electronic health information so that they can be better prepared in advance of an emergency.
Read Full Post.Health Affairs Article Points to HIO Readiness & Engagement in TEFCA
Vaishali Patel | June 22, 2021
The best way to gather information is by going straight to the source. That’s exactly what ONC did to learn and assess the state of health information entities, also known as health information exchange organizations (HIOs), across the country. A recent survey conducted by Dr. Julia Adler-Milstein of University of California San Francisco (USCF), with ONC support, is the sixth national HIO survey of its kind. This instrument placed a particular emphasis on the proposed Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA).
Read Full Post.Information Blocking Through the Eyes of Health Information Exchanges
Vaishali Patel | May 10, 2021
The information blocking regulations at 45 CFR Part 171 began to apply to health care providers, health IT developers of certified health IT, health information exchanges, and health information networks on April 5, 2021, per ONC’s recent interim final rule. That makes now a good time to consider stakeholders’ views about practices that may constitute information blocking, including the extent to which they exist. Our recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association reports on a survey of health information exchanges’ (HIEs) perceptions of other stakeholders’ practices related to information blocking.
Read Full Post.