Without HIE, Participation In ACOs Is Limited

Yesterday, my colleague Sarah Threnhauser profiled the health information exchange (HIE) plan for Los Angeles County’s Integrated Behavioral Health Information System (see HIE – In The Works In Los Angeles). In the article, she also pointed out that the rollout of functional HIEs is not going well, despite the Meaningful Use 2 incentives.

A recent online poll reported in FierceHealthIT further highlighted these difficulties, as 62 accountable care organizations (ACO) reported that access to external data was challenging, and 88% of those ACOs face “significant obstacles in integrating data from disparate sources” (see Poor Interoperability A Significant Barrier For ACOs . . .