Health Information Exchange (HIE) data isn't always the right tool for making a complete clinical decision, but it is an excellent place to start.
The best approach is simple: use curated HIE data to understand what you already know about the patient, build a timeline of clinical encounters, and identify exactly what critical information is still missing.
For many care delivery workflows, a Predoc-curated HIE summary provides enough information to quickly assemble a high-level encounter history (for connected facilities), including hospitalizations, emergency department visits, outpatient appointments, procedures, diagnoses, medications, and available laboratory results. This longitudinal view helps clinicians understand where the patient has received care and what clinical information is already available, as long as the providers contribute to information exchanges.
From there, providers can determine whether they have enough information to make a decision, or whether key data, like imaging or labs ordered, are missing.
Instead of requesting every historical medical record, care teams can use the encounter list and curated summary to identify specific gaps. Perhaps a recent A1C is missing, a pathology report from a specialist visit isn't available, or imaging results from a hospitalization need to be reviewed. Rather than launching a broad chart retrieval effort, they can request only the records associated with those specific encounters.
This two-step workflow supports more efficient care:
- Review a Predoc-curated HIE data to quickly understand the patient's history and build an encounter timeline.
- Retrieve targeted previous provider records only for the encounters, tests, or reports needed to complete the clinical picture.
By combining curated HIE data with targeted record retrieval, organizations can accelerate clinical decision making, reduce unnecessary record requests, and ensure providers spend their time reviewing the information that truly impacts patient care, not sorting through hundreds of pages of records they don't need.
