Health Information Exchange Health, Medicine, Nursing Essay

Health Information Exchange
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation

Health Information Exchange
Executive Summary
The paper focuses on the effectiveness of health information exchange (HIE) in promoting quality healthcare services. The main purpose of HIE is to ensure that physicians have access to accurate patients’ data when they need it so that they can use it to make effective clinical decisions. The use of HIE enable healthcare providers to avoid medication errors, curb misdiagnoses, and avoid duplicate testing. In addition, the paper discusses how rural hospitals are making good progress in implementing EHR systems despite their financial, workforce, technological challenges. Many patients have a positive attitude toward HIE. However, just like any other technology, EHRs have their merits and demerits. The advantages of HIE include the improvement of patient care, saves time and money, the reduction of medical errors, and efficiency of medical information exchange. In contrast, the disadvantages are data privacy concerns, high cost of implementing a proper EHR system, and patients’ negative attitude toward HIE. The primary recommendations in the effectiveness and efficiency of HIE are to combat the security and privacy issues.
Introduction
Many hospitals in the United States of America (USA) have implemented electronic health recording systems to facilitate health information exchange (HIE). In particular, the rapid advancement of technology has significantly affected the way information is transferred to the healthcare industry. Although some people might be against HIE due to privacy concerns that might arise, it enables physicians, pharmacists, nurses, and other health professionals to access and share patients’ information securely, which fosters patient safety and improve the quality of medical services (HealthIT.gov, 2020). HIE facilitates effective information exchange among healthcare providers, which promotes the provision of high-quality medical services since it helps physicians to avoid medication errors, decrease duplicate testing, and improve disease diagnoses.
History or Background of HIE
The primary objective of HIE is to ensure that all relevant patient data is available to physicians when needed regardless of where the information was generated. HIE was founded, and its use accelerated in 2009 after the formation of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act (Holmgren & Adler-Milstein, 2017). HITECH promoted the implementation of the HIE since it knew that interconnected electronic health recording systems have a significant potential to facilitate faster access of clinical data, which would help physicians get solutions to various medical conditions to the highly fragmented healthcare system of the USA (Holmgren & Adler-Milstein, 2017). Although not all hospitals have implemented the electronic health records (EHR), many of them have a system in place to ensure that patient data is shared internally or externally when the need arises. Without HIE, healthcare providers make ineffective clinical decisions due to the lack of relevant information, have increased chances of misdiagnosing sick individuals, duplicative utilization, and suboptimal treatment. Figure 1 in the appendix section shows how HIE facilitates the exchange of data among physicians (Payne et al., 2019). As a result, HIE was introduced to improve patient care since it enhances faster access to clinical data among health professionals.
HIE in Rural Areas
The majority of rural clinics in the USA continue to use mail and fax exclusively to exchange medical information. However, the percentage of rural facilities that are using EHR continues to rise. In other words, rural healthcare providers lag behind urban physicians when it comes to the level of adoption of health information technology. Some of the significant issues that hinder the implementation of EHR in rural hospitals include workforce problems, technological challenges, and financial barriers (State Health Information Exchange Program, 2013). The best thing about technology is that it enables rural healthcare providers to communicate with urban hospitals and obtain relevant information that promotes quality medical services. Rural hospitals have realized the significance of HIE, and they are working in close collaboration with the local, federal, and state governments to improve the technology infrastructure. Figure 2 shows how American hospitals both in rural and urban areas continually implemented EHRs from 2011 to 2015 (Henry et al., 2016). Therefore, as time elapses, the percentage of health facilities in rural areas implementing EHR systems continues to rise.
Patients' Attitudes towards HIE
The majority of patients in the USA are enthusiastic about HIE since they recognize its capacity to improve the safety and quality of healthcare services they receive from hospitals. For example, some are happy to save money that would have been used to repeat a particular medical procedure, which information already exists in the EHR. Many Americans know the importance of HIE and are not a barrier when it comes to its effective usage (Simon et al., 2009). However, a small number of patients are concerned about the misuse of their medical profiles, which makes them develop a negative attitude toward HIE. For instance, hackers keep looking for system loopholes so that they can obtain medical or financial information. When patients' medical data get into the wrong hands, it can be detrimental to their owners' reputation, particularly if it is published on the Internet. As such, privacy concerns are the most significant issues that make individuals have a negative attitude towards HIE. The federal government implemented the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in 1996 to safeguard patients' data during storage and when it is shared electronically. Moreover, HIPAA prohibits health professionals from sharing patients' data without their consent and from using insecure communication media. 
Challenges and New Strategies of HIE
The primary challenges facing the use of HIE include privacy and confidentiality, unauthorized access by rogue physicians, and patients’ unwillingness to share accurate medical data. Although many patients have a positive attitude toward HIE, some of them fear that their medical information will be compromised and shared to the public by cybercriminals (Yeager et al., 2017). Recently, the cases of cyber-attacks targeting hospitals have been increasing. In addition, it is hard to identify rogue physicians whose objective is to access patients’ data stored in the EHR and sell i...