A widely interconnected health information exchange network is one of the primary goals of CMS's EHR incentives program, which is why we at Mitochon believe in facilitating the movement of health records to an all-digital realm.

Farzad Mostashari, the National Health IT Coordinator, appears to agree. The ONC official told Government Health IT that he is pushing the HIT Standards Committee to establish quality benchmarks now, even though EHR systems and ePrescribing have not yet been universally adopted.

Why? "We can’t afford to wait another five years before we have exchange in this country," he stated at a Standards Committee meeting on September 28.

Mostashari and his colleagues at the ONC have noted that Stage 2 meaningful use requirements will require much more data transport and security, as well as a standardized user vocabulary, the news source noted.

Other members of the team added that the agency has been making great strides toward interoperability.

John Halamka, co-chair of the Health Information Security Standards Committee and CIO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, said that the HISSC is quite possibly the hardest-working advisory committee ever created by the federal government, according to the meeting notes.

Thus, physicians who are concerned that EHR is an insular technology may be reassured knowing that the ONC is pushing to broaden HIE and interoperability as quickly as possible.

At Mitochon, delivering quality EHR systems that allow freer inter-practice communication is just what we do. Our philosophy holds that patients and healthcare providers come first, which is why we designed an electronic records-keeping system that is free and intuitive, and that provides support for best practices.

Such innovations are key to the improvement of healthcare quality, according to a talk given at the annual American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) conference.

Carolyn Clancy, the director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, delivered the speech as a clarion call for more scientifically managed patient care.

"The fundamental problem with the quality of American medicine is that we’ve failed to view delivery of health care as a science… That’s a mistake, a huge mistake," she said, quoting Peter Pronovost, a physicians at Johns Hopkins University.

His comments were made in a 2007 issue of the New Yorker Magazine. Since that time, great strides have been made in patient data delivery, not least via the CMS Medicare and Medicaid incentives program.

However, the healthcare system must analyze how patient data flows and how doctors share best practices in order to pursue a more efficient – and ultimately cheaper – infrastructure, she emphasized.