Transitions of Care: Completeness of the Interoperability Data Standard for Communication from Home Health Care to Primary Care

Abstract

Data sharing is necessary to address communication deficits along the transitions of care among community settings. Evidence-based practice supports home healthcare (HHC) patients to see their primary care team within the first two weeks of hospital discharge to reduce rehospitalization risk. A small subset of patient data collected at HHC admission is mandated to be transmitted to primary care, predominantly by fax. Using qualitative analysis, we assessed completeness of the United States Core Data for Interoperability (USCDI) interoperability standard, as compared to the patient data collected by the primary care team (topics) and HHC (classes) during the initial visit; and offer interoperability recommendations. Findings indicate the USCDI does not cover 74% of the 19 faxed HHC classes that mapped to the primary care topics, and 95% of the 38 not-faxed HHC classes. We offer USCDI recommendations to address these interoperability gaps.

Keywords: communication; continuity of patient care/standards; documentation; home health care nursing; home health nursing; nursing informatics; primary health care; transition of care.