Health Information Exchanges Serve 92% of U.S.

Health information exchanges (HIEs) serve the vast majority of those in the U.S.: approximately 92% of the population, according to a new survey. The results were released by the Strategic Health Information Exchange Collaborative (SHIEC) at the opening of its 5th annual national conference, on Monday. But even as the results touted the expansion as a critical advancement to a nagging problem in the healthcare landscape, it was a top federal official the same morning who called the current data landscape of American healthcare a “communication disaster.” Clearly, full interoperability in healthcare is a matter of dynamic debate.SHIEC points to the expansion of such HIE coverage as a key breakthrough toward connecting all the data dots.“We’ve believed in the value of HIEs since the early days of SHIEC, but we wanted to measure how HIEs provide critical national infrastructure to improve the way healthcare is delivered in communities across the nation,” said Kelly Hoover Thompson, the CEO of SHIEC.