HIM 615 Assignment Health Care Standards Paper
The use of health information technology is essential to improving patient care quality. Health care organizations can communicate information using health information technology (HIT) standards based on certain techniques for interconnecting systems to achieve interoperability (Alotaibi & Federico, 2017). These standards are crucial because they could improve data transit, security, format and structure, and the definitions of particular terminology and codes. HealthIT.gov (2021) states that standards development organizations (SDOs) establish, revise, and maintain standards using a collaborative method that includes the intended users. The purpose of this essay is to talk about the value of health information technology (HIT) standards for the nation’s healthcare system.
Achieving interoperability, which refers to the ability of various information infrastructures to obtain, exchange, incorporate, and jointly utilize data in a coordinated manner across boundaries ranging from organizational to national, is a key component of developing standards for the health care system. Interoperability improves individual and population health across the care continuum and provides quick, seamle
ss information interchange (HealthIT.gov, 2021). The conclusion is that the sharing of healthcare data formats, interfaces, and standards enables adequate access to data and ensures that it is shared appropriately and securely across the care spectrum depending on appropriate settings and relevant stakeholders, including individuals.
Thirdly, standards establish best practices for evaluating the efficiency of HIT tools and applications to make sure they provide the intended advantages to healthcare professionals and patients (Alotaibi & Federico, 2017). The implication is that through exchanging information, healthcare professionals can assess their clinical capabilities and create efficient interventions to improve overall quality (HIMSS, 2021). If there are HIT standards in place where they satisfy the minimal requirements, any provider’s competence, including nurses, can be evaluated. For instance, standards make ensuring that nurses create rules that prioritize providing patient-centered care by enabling them to make wise choices based on the shared information.
Fourth, standards provide a shared vocabulary and set of expectations that enable system and device interoperability. Independent of
the application or supplier, standards allow healthcare facilities, clinicians, and patients to communicate data. Stakeholders have access to information about persons that they can understand thanks to the standards, which also improve the coordination and delivery of healthcare generally. Fifth, standards are necessary for providers and suppliers to create terminology that improve system security as a whole and safeguard patient information. The preservation of privacy and confidentiality by healthcare organizations and providers who use health information technology (HIT) is a key component of these rules (HIMSS,2021). To ensure that clinicians, patients, and institutions interact and exchange information safely and effectively, HIT standards are a critical component.
Current Organization’s Most Important HIT Standards
Organizations can communicate information to improve the overall delivery of patient care thanks to interoperability. Implicitly, Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resource is the most important HIT standard for the current organization (FHIR). The requirement for electronically communicating medical information is at level seven in international health positions. The standard is regarded as the next-generation exchange model that the medical industry is embracing to promote interoperability. Electronic health records (EHRs) are used by providers to display patient data in a variety of ways, such as medical history, prescriptions, and experiences (HealthIT.gov, n.d). Regardless of one’s local EHR system and stored data format, FHIR offers a mechanism for these entities to represent and transfer information among physicians and organizations in a common manner (Goundrey-Smith, 2018). The FHIR standards ensure flexibility to meet the demands of various use cases within the larger healthcare ecosystem while combining the most suitable elements from the prior standards into typical specifications. It follows that these standards put an emphasis on implementation and make use of the newest web technologies to promote quick adoption throughout the care continuum.
The FHIR standard has a substantial impact on the organization because it improves its capacity to provide patients with high-quality coordinated care by helping it fully comprehend their needs. The requirement includes administrative, foundational, infrastructure, and data sharing skills that enable the business to make wise healthcare decisions (Goundrey-Smith, 2018). Additionally, it offers clinical reasoning capabilities that allow any organization and its healthcare professionals to deploy clinical knowledge artifacts, such as clinical decision support rules, by utilizing resource collection, extensions, and profiles. The standard makes it possible to use precise information requests to improve care while services are being provided (clinical decision support) and evaluate treatment after it has occurred (quality measurement).
Standard That Needs to Be Improved
The Validated Healthcare Directory Implementation Guide (VHDir IG), based on FHIR Version 4.0, is one standard that requires improvement. The standard outlines architectural considerations for businesses exchanging data from a centralized source and providing attestations, validations, and other services. The concept for the standard came from envisioning a national hub for provider data that has been validated. It does, however, necessitate implementers with a variety of business requirements, circumstances, and use cases to apply to them. The consequence is that implementers may not apply all the content but only applicable to them (FHIR, n.d). The standard is a foundation for exchanging verified provider information, but it must be combined with other standards, such as FHIR, by an organization. The standard provides assistance with the implementation of more substantial applications for improved care delivery. At the organizational level, strengthening its conceptual foundation will improve interoperability overall.
Conclusion
Standards for health information technology (HIT) are essential because they enable safe channels for sharing data between organizations and providers. These essential standards are required by organizations in order to improve patient data security and interoperability. Standards are provided by frameworks like FHIR and VHDir IG that assist businesses in achieving interoperability. Therefore, providers must make the most of the available tools to enhance security and safeguard patient data in accordance with the most suitable standards. The seamless exchange of information and the ability for clinicians in various care settings to make informed decisions are ensured by improving interoperability. Utilizing clinical support decision platforms to deliver high-quality treatment requires the implementation of these principles.