Since last year, the number of operational health information exchanges has more than doubled to 228, with private exchanges seeing a more rapid growth than public exchanges, according to a report by research firm KLAS, Government Health IT reports (Mosquera, Government Health IT, 7/8).
The report, titled "Health Information Exchanges: Rapid Growth in an Evolving Market," was based on interviews with 230 health information exchange users and 35 health IT vendors.
Key Findings
According to the report, the number of functioning private-sector exchanges has increased from 52 to 161 over the past year. The number of public exchanges grew from 37 to 67 over the same time period.
The KLAS report noted that users of private health data exchanges gave high performance scores to systems by:
- Cerner;
- Medicity; and
- RelayHealth.
Users of public health data exchanges gave high ratings to systems by Axolotl and Orion (Goedert, Health Data Management, 7/8).
Why Slower Growth in Public Data Exchanges?
KLAS researchers said the slower growth in public health information exchanges could stem from government regulation and challenges in securing long-term funding.
In addition, physicians might be concerned about the integrity of data in public health information exchanges and whether sifting through such data would add to their workloads, researchers said (Government Health IT, 7/8).