Jordan Everson | November 13, 2023
Many hospitals have adopted systems for interoperable patient data exchange and are connected to national networks. However, ONC has consistently found that rates of interoperable exchange for smaller, rural, and independent hospitals have notably lagged behind other hospitals. For example, in both 2017 and 2021, rural hospitals were 23 percentage points less likely to engage in interoperable exchange compared to urban hospitals. In a recent study, ONC explored this digital divide to better understand the relationship between interoperable exchange and measures of hospitals that served populations that have been marginalized.
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Catherine Strawley | October 26, 2023
Screening for patients’ health-related social needs can help providers more effectively coordinate patient care and connect patients to the resources they need. Social needs are social conditions—such as food insecurity, housing instability, and lack of reliable transportation—which often result from underlying social determinants of health and can adversely affect health outcomes if left unaddressed. While studies show that patients are generally comfortable with social needs screening, little is known about patients’ comfort or preferences around how social needs data are captured and shared with other providers and service organizations to inform treatment and care coordination.
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Wei Chang | July 31, 2023
Jordan Everson | May 31, 2023
According to a recent American Hospital Association (AHA) survey, most hospitals know about the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common AgreementSM (TEFCASM) and, among those, very few plan on sitting out.
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Alex Baker | October 13, 2022
On August 1, 2022, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced final changes to its payment program for acute care hospitals in 2023. The FY 2023 Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) final rule also included policies for the 2023 Medicare Promoting Interoperability Program, which rewards eligible hospitals and critical access hospitals (CAHs) for the meaningful use of certified electronic health record (EHR) technology, and for the Inpatient Quality Reporting Program, which requires hospitals to report data in key areas.
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