Since returning to the office regularly after my intermittent absences of the past year, I have had a difficult time renewing my weekly blogging schedule. In order to ease back in, I have decided to do very short blog posts that will provide information that has come across my desk recently. I am hopeful this will help me get back into a rhythm of regular posting and also get useful information to you. Once I have a regular pattern re-established, I will add in longer posts. Thanks for bearing with my changes and transitions.
As a resident of the state of Florida, I was very glad to see an article this week in FierceHealthIT reporting that several states, including ours, have begun working together to assure access to health information during a disaster. Hurricanes are a big concern for us here. Since my Mother was displaced from Louisiana to Florida by Katrina in 2005, we have seen precious little movement to assure that, eight years later, patients will continue to be treated properly when they do not have access to their own physicians and pharmacies.
The new collaboration described in this article will allow exchange of health records for persons displaced from their homes by widespread disaster. The states participating are Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Michigan, Wisconsin and West Virginia. The plan is to have connection with at least one other state through a Health Information Exchange (HIE) to assure access to patient records. The Southeast Region HIT-HIE Collaboration (SERCH) Final Report published in July of 2012 explores the legal and technical details required of such a project.
A guidebook prepared by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) provides information for providers on how to connect into a system that will allow sharing of information in case of emergencies like natural disasters. A Guide to Connecting Health Information Exchange in Primary Care was published by AHRQ in May of 2013.
These projects aimed at linking local records to regional systems to be shared in case of emergency may at some time help all of us. This is just a beginning step toward solidifying what electronic health records can do for us.
Please share your thoughts about this kind of healthcare information exchange in the comments below. Thanks for reading.
