Electronic Health Records: An Audit and Internal Control Guide

CHAPTER 10

Conclusions

Be not the first by which a new thing is tried, or the last to lay the old aside.

—ALEXANDER POPE (1688–1744), ENGLISH POET AND SATIRIST

MARKET OVERVIEW

Let's take this opportunity to recap some of the key concepts addressed in the previous nine chapters. The first concept discussed in Chapter 1, and illustrated again for convenience in Exhibit 10.1, was the P-HCC.

The S-HCC, introduced in Chapter 1 and reillustrated in Exhibit 10.2, was the second major concept introduced.

Both P-HCC and S-HCC market players generate, process, and use health information independently and simultaneously. For example, a provider may notice an outbreak of a certain disease and report disease information to a public health agency. The provider likely generates both patient-specific health data and health data aggregated from patients with similar outbreaks. Once data is sent to a public health agency, the agency likely generates, processes, and exchanges three different health files: one to identify the provider, another to identify the affected patient, and a third to identify other providers who are reporting similar patient conditions. The Information Continuum (IC), reillustrated in Exhibit 10.3, addresses the technology infrastructure that hosts these types of health information transactions.

EXHIBIT 10.1 PRIMARY HEALTHCARE CONTINUUM PLAYERS

Source: MBA Inc. (www.mbanews.com ...