The National eHealth Collaborative (NeHC) conducted a study recently of 12 health information exchanges (HIEs) to provide some insights into trends regarding innovative strategies and business models. The answers provided some ideas for self-sustaining business enterprises, which also addresses rural hospital data storage.
First, there are some barriers present that can prevent the kind of growth and sustainability organizations are striving to build. It’s not always an easy task to determine whether or not a source of information can be trusted. Services that are put in place that make it possible to make decisions about a patient’s case are difficult to adopt because the end-user can’t verify the reliability of the information.
Another area that comes up consistently as a problem is that there are issues regarding interoperability standards, which can drain HIE resources. Organizations become frustrated because there are different methods in use for implementing the Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel. This is an area that will prevent HIE growth in the long-term because there are no semantic interoperability standards in place for clinical documents.
Something that does work for successful HIEs is a focus on training and working closely with clinicians. When everyone understands the HIE applications, efficiencies are improved. A better understanding of the HIE applications also helps keep the workflow going smoothly while integrating applications.
The future outlook of HIEs and rural hospital data storage could be challenging if a great amount of collaboration does not become the norm. The NeHC survey says that some providers are looking to evolve offering more “varied portfolio services” and the different health information exchange storage and sharing models in order to meet the needs of their customers.
Another area that deserves a look is archiving practices that take a vendor neutral approach. Vendor neutral archives (VNAs), can offer healthcare providers a seamless image story and archiving resource that works across any picture archiving communication system (PACS). With a VNA in place, healthcare providers can transparently migrate from any storage platform, more cost effectively and with greater ease.
As the survey revealed, without a large amount of communication, hospitals face challenges in adopting image data center because there are so many site environment systems. Vendors have to listen and be willing to help. This can be more challenging than it might sound because hospitals don’t keep the same PACS-supplying vendor forever. Once the switch is made, the issues sharing images and data start all over again. This is why VNAs are gaining popularity.
Healthcare providers constantly struggle sharing images with other departments, no matter how good their PACS is. They can’t even share images with specialists at other facilities because the DICOM is different.
OffSite Image Management, Inc., has developed VNA services that circumvent all these issues and offer clients everything they need in data storage and sharing. OffSite uses Level IV data centers with excellent security measures and disaster recovery plans. Better yet, access to data is available every minute of every day. Rural facilities are finding these solutions far less expensive and are guaranteed to save up to 60 percent.