Helping health care’s “Digital have-nots” bridge the digital divide

Bevey Miner: ©Consensus Cloud Solutions

Despite advances in health care information exchange, the flow of data between large hospitals and small care facilities is anything but smooth and seamless. Health care providers consistently face breakdowns in communication and care coordination due to gaps in information sharing, according to a recent survey of health care CIOs.

The survey, commissioned by Consensus Cloud Solutions and conducted by the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME), explored the state of data exchange between health care’s digital “haves” and “have-nots,” including rural hospitals, post-acute care facilities, and community clinics that aren’t connected to an electronic health record.

Although this digital divide is jeopardizing continuity of care, the survey results also revealed pragmatic solutions for bridging these gaps to achieve unfettered information sharing. Here’s a closer look at the findings.

Challenges across the digital divide

Barriers to data exchange abound, given the disjointed patchwork of various platforms, systems, and technologies that health care organizations employ today. While EHR adoption has made it easier to share patients' medical information between connected facilities, many smaller providers still don’t have the funds or resources to implement these systems. Without an interoperable EHR, even a query from a QHIN is challenging.

In the survey, health care CIOs ranked breakdowns in care coordination as the top challenge facing their data sharing struggles, followed by difficulties making (and following up with) referrals, finding patient information, and determining how and where to send information. Among rural hospitals, receiving referrals from larger partners emerged as a particular pain point.

These barriers don’t just impede an organization’s operational and financial performance; the implications can impact patient care and health outcomes down the line. More than half of the survey respondents (54%) say these challenges have had some impact on care continuity with a lens on health equity, while nearly 42% say the impact has been significant. The vast majority (83%) agree that tech equity is critical to achieving health equity, which means equal access to patient data. So, it’s understandable that 62% of these leaders placed health equity among their organization’s top five priorities. These issues demand solutions.

Solutions to bridge the gap

By re-evaluating the tools they’re using to exchange information, health care organizations are exploring new ways of streamlining communication across the continuum of care.

According to the survey, many facilities (46%) still rely on paper fax to send information to other providers in the absence of an EHR. While 29% have moved toward digital cloud fax, 12.5% just pick up the phone and 8% send a direct secure message. While some users can share data within a few hours, the average data exchange timeline takes between one to five days — and some modes can take up to a week or more! When patient health is on the line, these delays can be detrimental to the delivery of care.

The need for improved data exchange is evident, and many health care organizations are seeking solutions for inefficient processes. Over a third (34%) continue to rely on paper-based information exchange. Nearly half (46%) believe in the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to address these challenges, with 33% actively exploring these technologies.

Most health care executives (50%) think it should be the federal government’s responsibility to fund the digital transformation of small, under-resourced health care facilities. A smaller segment (29%) see promise in community grants that promote tech equity, and even fewer (12.5%) believe larger hospital systems should foot the bill to level the digital playing field. However, only 30% of providers are working one-on-one with smaller organizations to address this challenge, 29% don’t have the funding to bring their rural counterparts up to speed, and another 29% lack the IT resources and staff to lend a hand.

Enhanced information sharing

The survey results reveal a clear business case for closing the gaps in information exchange between health care’s digital haves and have-nots. Fortunately, bridging this divide doesn’t necessarily require expensive technology investments. In fact, the solution may lie in a common technology that most small health care facilities already have access to: digital cloud fax, which is different from paper fax.

By applying AI in the form of machine learning and natural language processing to digital cloud fax, health care facilities can use intelligent data extraction to automatically pull structured data from unstructured documents, converting critical details into formats that can be mapped directly into other systems. This pragmatic tool offers an affordable solution to modernize health care data exchange from these post-acute facilities, leveling the playing field between organizations while breaking down barriers to health equity and tech equity alike.

As health care leaders continue to explore ways to eliminate gaps in information exchange, pursuing pragmatic solutions that have the potential to strengthen tech equity and health equity is a good place to start, doesn’t require a big investment, and is low tech.

Bevey Miner is executive vice president, healthcare strategy and policy for Consensus Cloud Solutions.