Abstract: |
Public health agencies have long recognized the need to more effectively integrate and exchange data with their community partners. Recent federal legislative health initiatives have made this integration a priority. There is a strong push among health care partners, such as public health agencies, pediatricians, and hospitals to exchange early hearing test results electronically. With universal newborn screening policies, early hearing detection and intervention (EHDI) programs have dramatically increased the number of initial screenings. However, challenges remain with children failing to receive follow up screenings and insufficient data exchange for sharing care plan information across birthing centers, public health, and pediatricians.
These challenges remain despite important advances in establishing EHDI data exchange standards. EHDI is one of the most active public health domain areas in the development and testing of standards for the exchange of information between public health and health care. These standards, based on interoperability approaches established by HL7 and Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) standards bodies, specify the exchange of screening test results, care plans, and clinical quality measures. Yet many state EHDI programs lack the capability to send or receive these standard messages.
In this presentation the authors will share an overview of HL7 and IHE EHDI standards and findings from a capability maturity model-based assessment of state EHDI programs’ current information exchange capability. The assessment provides EHDI programs guidance toward higher levels of program capability to effectively utilize data standards for exchange with clinical health care providers and improve newborn screening outcomes. Specific findings will characterize the current state of information technology use in EHDI, state EHDI programs’ role in jurisdictional health information exchanges (HIE) and Meaningful Use regulations, and approaches for establishing conditions for interoperable technology including policies, governance, workforce development, and training. |