One of the significant ways that ScanSTAT makes things easier for everyone is related to the concept of interoperability. Interoperability is “the ability of computer systems or software to exchange and make use of information.” In health care that means that different electronic health record (EHR) systems can exchange patient information automatically and without human intervention.
Interoperability for medical information has been a government initiative in the United States for many years. In fact, HIPAA was initially passed, in large part, to promote administrative simplification in the healthcare industry and later laws, such as HITECH, promoted the adoption of interoperability among health care facilities systems, certified EHR technology and other systems such as labs, radiology, and oncology. As of this writing, February 2021, there is a proposed rule in the Federal Register that would amend HIPAA and further promote interoperability as it relates to the manual exchange of health information (continuing care requests in ScanSTAT’s world). It is apparent, now, that a goal of HIPAA and this recent proposed rule is to facilitate patients transferring their health care information at low or no cost to the patient.
However, interoperability has been very difficult to achieve in the United States. A health care provider would have to invest significant time and money to develop interoperability between its systems and other providers’ systems. The resources required to build this integration are often difficult to come by due to increasing demands for updated technology and a heightened emphasis on patient care experience.
So, how does ScanSTAT fit into interoperability? As a Release of Information and Health Information Management service provider for hospitals and health systems, we facilitate the coordination of care process for our client partners through our Release of Information and Inbound Document Management services.
In most cases, when a patient needs to transfer their medical records to another facility, their records are faxed from the original health care facility to the new facility. When those records arrive, it creates additional paperwork that the receiving facility must then manually add to their system which increases the administrative burden on facility staff. ScanSTAT’s Inbound Document Management service manages all of those incoming records for our partners by electronically filing them into the EHR upon arrival, so the facility doesn’t need to dedicate additional administrative support to the task and, more importantly, when a patient comes in to receive care, their information has already been neatly added to the system.
Our team processes continuing care requests thousands of times each day and millions of times every year – many of them through our proprietary U-Control and STATus-View applications and many others directly from our customers’ EHR systems. Additionally, we’re proud to process these continuing care requests at no cost to our provider customers and patients. We are making things easier for everyone in health care by exchanging information for patients’ continuing care and supporting our customers’ efforts to achieve interoperability.
Article by Matthew Rohs, President of ScanSTAT Technologies
About ScanSTAT Technologies
ScanSTAT makes it easier for hospitals, healthcare systems, and medical practices to manage health information. Whether you are considering making a complete transition or supplementing your in-house Release of Information and Health Information Management operations, we can help. We place as much importance on privacy, security, and customer service as you do. We can assume the HIPAA liability involved in transferring information and removing the burden of reporting from your staff or supporting it as needed.
Contact us at scanstat.com/demo to learn how you can leverage ScanSTAT experts to support your ROI and HIM needs.