I’m currently on the long flight from Las Vegas to New York City. The early flight time and long flight remind me why I prefer to just stay in Las Vegas with the occasional west coast trip, but I digress. In order to not lose an entire day of work on the airplane, I spent far too much for the overpriced internet service on my flight. As I’m traveling at 30,000 feet, it’s amazing to me that I’m connected nearly as good as when I’m sitting at home. Sure, in flight internet has been around for quite a while, but it still amazes me. What will amaze me even more is when the internet is free on every flight. Maybe pharma ads could pay for this too.

While experiencing this amazing connectivity, I can’t help but think of how poor so much of the connectivity in healthcare is. That’s right. We can find a way to offer internet connectivity at 30,000 feet in an aircraft moving hundreds of miles per hour and yet we can’t get connectivity to rural hospitals and other healthcare locations?

Plus, even speaking more broadly, I can access all of my normal services from an airplane, but for some reason I have no way to connect all of my healthcare data together.

Those in the industry realize the problems. The challenge of connecting all of our healthcare data from the various EHR (or maybe in this case EMR is appropriate) data silos is an academic exercise that’s easily accomplished. Hit any of the interoperability showcases at HIMSS or other healthcare IT events and you’ll see EHR software vendors communicating with each other and sharing data. Why then can’t we make this a reality?

The challenges are still the same they’ve been for a long time now: funding and politics.

I still cringe to think of the missed opportunity that ARRA and the HITECH Act could have provided in this regard. Instead of incentivizing use of an EMR, they should have and could have incentivized interoperability of healthcare data. The great part is that you’re not going to start exchanging data in healthcare without an EHR so you’d be getting more EHR software adopted and interoperability. Water under a bridge now I guess, but it keeps eating at me.

My biggest hope now is that a grass roots movement will form that will drive what we should be doing anyway. Everyone knows and understands the benefits to healthcare and the patient of exchanging healthcare data. It’s easy to make the case for how patient care improves and how duplicate costs are avoided. We need more people that are willing to hop on board interoperability of healthcare data cause it’s the right thing to do. Sure, we need to do it in a smart and reasonable way, but the ROI of healthcare data exchange goes well beyond dollars and cents. This ROI can’t be put on a spreadsheet, but instead will help us all sleep better at night.

Are there any movements like this out there? I can’t say I’ve seen any, but I’d love to see one. Then, we’d have a real beacon community that’s set on a hill because it earned and deserved the recognition as opposed to beacon communities paid for by tax payers.

Side Note: I’ll be in NYC this week at the Digital Health Conference and at the mHealth Summit in DC next week. I’m already planning to meet a number of my readers at these events, but I’d love to meet more.

I was hit by this comment made by Ciro on a LinkedIn group that I’m apart of (You can find the HealthcareScene.com blog network on LinkedIn if you want to join).

My patients are discharged from hospitals and are seen in different offices. I have no clue what changes have been made when I open the patient’s record in my emr. We have to call to have notes faxed to us all the time. Then we scan the documents into the emr and attach it to the patient record as a tif file. If a patient has a reaction to a medication and is seen at urgent care facility, I will not know about it unless the patient tells me. There is no integrity in my emr data since changes are made all the time. Our hospital recently spent millions on a emr that does not integrate with any outpatient emr. Where is the data exchanger and who deploys it? What button is clicked to make this happen!

My practice is currently changing its emr. We are paying big bucks for partial data migration. All the assurances we had about data portability when we purchased our original emr were exaggerated to make a sale.

Industry should have standards. In construction there are 2×4 ‘s , not 2×3.5 ‘s. Government should not impinge on privacy and free trade but they absolutely have a key role in creating standards that ensure safety and promote growth in industry.

I have 3 takeaways from Ciro’s comments.

1. The Pain of NO Healthcare Data Exchange – I can’t remember ever reading a first hand account that so aptly described the pains a doctor faces in trying to care for a patient and not being able to get the data they need to care for the patient properly. We need more stories like this that describe the pains of getting data exchanged in healthcare. Doctors need to recognize these pains and broadcast it far and wide. Otherwise, we’re not going to see any real significant movement. Patients can join in the chorus as well.

2. Healthcare Data Exchange Is Still Far Away – “Our hospital recently spent millions on a emr that does not integrate with any outpatient emr.” Doesn’t that comment just sting you to the core? If it doesn’t you’re probably the one that collected the million dollar checks from the hospital. I’m not sure what to say about the CIO that purchased a system that wouldn’t integrate with other EHR software.

3. Govenment’s Missed Opportunity – The last paragraph of Ciro’s comments talks about how the US government should have helped create a standard for data exchange. I still believe the EHR incentive money should be spent on establishing this standard and rewarding use of the standard. It’s probably too late now.

Keep the stories of terrible experiences exchanging healthcare data coming. I love to learn from first hand experiences. So, send them over and I’ll be sure to get your stories out and heard. Examples of great electronic healthcare data exchange would be welcome too. Few things motivate and gets things accomplished as much as pain and jealousy.