Healthcare data sharing is one of the hottest topics when talking about the importance of EMR software. Some people call it healthcare data portability. One of the problems I have with these discussions is that everyone has different goals for why they want to share the information. Here’s a partial list of reasons people may want to share healthcare data between various EMR respositories (in no particular order):

• Clinical data sharing for reimbursement purposes
• Quality data sharing for broader research goals
• Quality data sharing to meet ARRA requirements/reimbursement
• Data shared for continuity of care between providers

There are probably other reasons to have EMR software be able to share clinical data. However, you get the basic point. There are a lot of reasons why people want the ability to share healthcare related data from an EMR. One problem in the discussion of EMR data portability is that the conversation often gets convoluted when clear lines aren’t drawn for why the EMR data is being shared. Kind of reminds me of what it’s like to discuss EMR and not differentiate between a hospital EMR and ambulatory EMR. There are important similarities, but there are also important differences which always seem to confuse the discussion.