As per InstaMed’s Tenth Annual Report, healthcare consumers are demanding digitization, yet 87% of providers still rely on paper and manual processes for collecting patient data. While the industry is focusing on interoperability and digitalization, the use of paper leads to tedious tasks for medical staff and a high risk of errors in medical records.
The reason for this reliance on paper is that it works, while various solutions such as FHIR-based standard messaging via APIs, Direct Secure Messaging, the Direct StandardTM, and HL7 standards all rely on the sender and receiver to be on the same “standard.” Moreover, the sender must know the standard used by the recipient to ingest their documents. Thus, if the recipient does not have or use their Direct address, for example, interoperability fails.
To reduce this reliance on paper in healthcare, a trusted and secure document delivery network capable of connecting any two endpoints agnostically is required. Moreover, it must allow the recipient to declare which standard they want to utilize for ingesting patient records and transform documentation into different standard message types.
The solution is to focus on secure document delivery networks that can transform patient records from one standard to another while also performing data extraction, allowing the recipient to receive what they need in a format that their EHR can readily ingest and integrate. Thus, the tools and technology exist to eliminate the need and burden of paper in healthcare, and healthcare organizations, payers, and providers should focus on implementing interoperability in these secure document delivery networks.
To learn more about secure document delivery networks and how they can help reduce reliance on paper in healthcare, visit our EtherFax partner page. Our team of experts can provide you with more information about Etherfax’s solutions and how they can help your healthcare organization achieve true interoperability while improving patient care and reducing costs.