John Sharp is an IT Manager for a major medical center in Northeast Ohio. Areas of expertise include: ehealth, personal health records, Web 2.0 technologies, social media and project management. He is active in the Healthcare Information Management and Systems Society and the American Medical Informatics Association. The opinions expressed on this blog are those of the author.
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RHIOs struggle to Find Effective Business Models
December 29, 2007
In an article from Information Week, they review the report of the eHealth Initiative on “2007 Fourth Annual Survey of Health Information Exchange at the State, Regional, and Community Levels.” The analysis shows that the greatest barrier to health data exchange is finding sustainable business models. “
The survey found that reimbursement systems, which reward volume and fragmentation, also make it difficult for stakeholders to create sustainable business models.”
At the same time the RHIOs are successfully developing data exchanges for prescription information, lab results and outpatient information.
How will RHIOs fare in 2008? Without healthcare reform, they will continue to struggle. Perhaps is CMS developed incentives within Medicare, that would set the stage for less fragmentation and reimbursement primarily based on volume rather than continuity of care models.
