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Demand for provider registries grows as organizations promote data sharing initiatives

I’m packing my bags for Melbourne to attend HIC2010, Australia’s biggest health informatics conference, which will take place August 24-26. This will be my third time speaking at HIC. It’s one of my favorites, as it always delivers great networking, timely topics, and of course, a good glass of shiraz.

This year’s theme, Informing the Business of Healthcare, is especially timely as organizations around the world are working to improve healthcare while operating as a business. Provider registries can help deliver the metrics that power informatics initiatives.

Provider registries help uniquely and consistently identify care providers, including physicians, nurses, pharmacists and others in the care delivery team, and can be deployed on a local, regional or state/provincial basis. Global data sharing initiatives demand accurate provider identification, as accurate data can help find inefficiencies and improve care.

Provider data today tends to sit in silos without a single “source of truth,” resulting in poor data quality and tremendous inefficiencies. Duplicate work processes not only create inefficiencies, they also create inconsistent and time delayed provider data.

Accurate identification of the provider is important to coordinating care, sharing clinical results with appropriate and authorized providers, quality reporting, and payment. Accurate provider identification at the point of origin helps improve data quality in all downstream systems, helping deliver accurate data for disease surveillance, health planning, research and analytics.

Deploying a provider registry solution requires considerable flexibility due to the rigidity of legacy provider data sources. Credentialing and licensing files can be particularly vexing when exporting, even in a batch mode.

However, the end goal of a single “point of truth” for provider data and populating downstream systems with accurate data for analytics, research, and payment makes the effort worthwhile.  Additionally, clinical data can be routed almost instantaneously to the appropriate parties based on accurate and real-time provider identification.

Global efforts advancing data sharing will drive even greater adoption of provider registry solutions, and organizations will reap the rewards in terms of improve efficiencies and better patient care.

Join me next week at HIC2010 to hear more. I’ll be speaking on Thursday, August 26 at 1:45 PM in Concurrent Session 15. You can also stop by the IBM Smarter Healthcare Booth #29 during exhibit hours to see a demo and speak with us about your goals.