EMR Interoperability Challenges
📌 The vast majority of healthcare information is stored in Electronic Medical Records (EMRs), which historically have been siloed, preventing different systems from communicating.
📌 Key stakeholders, including patients, government, insurance companies, and the American Hospital Association (AHA), favor data sharing, citing benefits like increased patient safety, improved care quality, and decreased cost.
📌 Data sharing remains low; among hospitals in major U.S. metropolitan areas, integration levels range widely, with Cleveland at 78% integration, while Philadelphia lags significantly at only 35%.
📌 Even outside the top 15 largest cities, only 42% of hospitals share healthcare information, indicating a widespread coordination gap.

Data as Competitive Leverage
🛑 In some cases, healthcare providers are removing existing interoperability features, forcing patients to manually transfer data via methods like burning information onto CDs.
🛑 A specific example involved a 500+ specialty physician practice that stopped sharing imaging data with hospitals, requiring patients to incur costs and use cumbersome CD transfers for procedures like biopsies.
🛑 Providers use patient data as leverage or "stickiness" to prevent patient leakage to competitors, allowing them to potentially avoid competing on price or quality.
🛑 A policy change to restrict data sharing in one multi-specialty practice correlated with recent acquisition by a private equity firm, suggesting financial priorities overriding patient-centered care.

Key Points & Insights
➡️ The ideal goals of EMR interoperability—better coordination, safety, and lower costs—are not being met nationally despite broad consensus among stakeholders.
➡️ Do not trust marketing claims ("patient-centered"); instead, watch what organizations actually do regarding data sharing, as actions reveal true priorities.
➡️ Providers may intentionally make accessing data difficult to retain patients within their system, regardless of whether another system offers superior expertise.
➡️ The technical hurdle of sharing data is often surmountable, as demonstrated by high integration rates in cities like Cleveland, suggesting organizational/strategic resistance elsewhere.

📸 Video summarized with SummaryTube.com on Oct 09, 2025, 17:10 UTC