Diagnostic imaging provides health care providers with a plethora of information regarding their patients' conditions. However, many of these tests are being done too frequently, increasing costs and exposing people to unnecessary radiation risks. Health information exchange platforms can help reduce the cases of redundant testing by providing a patient's many doctors with the images they need for diagnosis and treatment.
HIE reduces unnecessary testing
In a recent paper, Niam Yaraghi, a fellow in the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution, reported that implementing HIE platforms in medical offices and hospitals can significantly reduce laboratory tests and medical imaging.
Yaraghi studied two hospitals in western New York to determine how an HIE could cut costs and eliminate unnecessary testing. Medical liaisons led by a registered nurse were instructed to query the HIE database for specific information in patients' medical histories and tell the physicians what information was available. The people whose records were accessed became the treatment group. Those patients who went without an HIE query were the control group. In the first hospital, there were 449 treatment patients and 399 controls. The second hospital had 303 people with HIE queries and 418 without them. Both controls and patients were treated by the same physicians.
When the HIE platform was used, doctors significantly reduced unnecessary testing. In the first of two hospitals Yaraghi analyzed, lab tests fell by 25 percent while radiology exams dropped 26 percent after an HIE was established. The second facility saw a 47-percent decrease in imaging.
Risks of imaging limited with HIE
Radiography has countless benefits when the tests are actually necessary. However, medical imaging without evidentiary support comes with many disadvantages. While only used in small doses, the radiation that accompanies digital imaging can cause problems when people receive too much of it, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration explained. These exams should only be used when needed to answer a medical question or diagnose or treat a disease, according to the FDA's guidelines for radiological protection. However, this is not always the case. According to a survey in Academic Emergency Medicine, researchers from various universities and organizations in Los Angeles, California, found that approximately 97 percent of the 435 emergency physicians who participated requested imaging tests out of fear of missing something or for non-medical reasons.
HIE platforms could reduce this unnecessary testing by sharing previous results with each member of a patient's health care team. This will eliminate the need for redundant testing and improve efficiency by cutting time spent on the futile exams, HealthIT.gov explained. Doctors will be able to spend less time reperforming tests and more of their shifts communicating with those patients or with people who actually need diagnostic imaging. This reduces the cost of health care because resources will not be wasted on patients who do not need them.
Medical imaging is helpful when it is needed. HIE platforms can narrow down those events and save the technology for those who require it.
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Ronny Bachrach
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