Hospitals using the same EHR vendor were found to be more interoperable than hospitals that did not use the same vendor, but interoperability is never guaranteed, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association on Jan. 7.
The researchers gathered deidentified data from 68 oncology EHRs, including four of the seven most frequently implemented to calculate interoperability scores.
To provide accurate analysis, the researchers used six medications and six laboratory tests, as they stated that data elements are received by EHRs differently. Even if EHRs are able to communicate across hospitals, the data may be unreadable when it gets to the receiving hospital.
They found that interoperability between hospitals using different vendors was lower than interoperability between hospitals using the same vendor, but even having the same vendor does not guarantee interoperability because the same EHR product may be implemented differently at different sites.