Health Information Exchange: Current Challenges and Impediments to Implementing National Health Information Infrastructure

Abstract

The inability to exchange health information of patients across diverse healthcare organizations and providers is a critical component responsible for both the increase in medical errors, which may result in premature death of the patient and the continuous increase in healthcare costs and redundancies.  It is projected that by 2020, national healthcare expenditures will reach $4.8 trillion; nearly 20% of the GDP.  This may be attributed to the lack of standardization of health information technology.     Because the private healthcare market has failed to resolve this issue, government intervention is necessary to lead and establish a standard platform for the exchange of health information.  In the absence of standardization, the goal of attaining a national health information exchange network will not materialize.  The standardization of the World Wide Web and the financial sector during the early 1980’s should serve as a model for policy makers and industry experts.  This paper proposes federal government intervention to standardize health information technology and adoption of the health record bank model as proposed by researchers Ball and Gold (Ball & Gold, 2006).  Adoption of the health record bank model can be realized by utilizing current e-commerce technologies.  Furthermore, adoption of this model in health information exchange will be less expensive and at the same time will lessen the government’s financial burden as it relates to the development of health information technology.