What You Should Know:
– A collaborative effort between the Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy and Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ASTP), the American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM), and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) has yielded significant insights into the challenges and opportunities of health IT interoperability in primary care.
– By embedding HIT-related questions into the ABFM’s Continuous Certification Questionnaire (CCQ), the research team achieved a high response rate and valuable data on physician interoperability experiences. This approach contrasted sharply with the low response rates of traditional surveys like the National Electronic Health Records Survey (NEHRS) and the Physician Health Information Technology Survey (PHITS).
Physicians Interoperability Experience
Key findings from the collaborative research include:
- High documentation burden: Family physicians reported spending significantly more time on EHR documentation outside of work hours compared to other physician groups.
- Consistent challenges: Despite differences in practice settings, physicians across various specialties reported similar frustrations with HIT, such as interoperability issues and workflow disruptions.
- Value of targeted surveys: Embedding HIT questions within existing professional certification processes can improve data quality and response rates.
Based on these findings, the research team has refined the survey questions for the 2024 ABFM CCQ to focus on interoperability and the exchange of patient information. This ongoing collaboration between ASTP, ABFM, and UCSF demonstrates the power of public-private partnerships in addressing critical healthcare challenges.