About this Course

Interoperability 101: Foundations of Interoperability in Healthcare 

Healthcare information is created in many places, including doctor’s offices, hospitals, pharmacies, laboratories, health plans, patient portals, registries and public health systems. For care to be coordinated and effective, that information often needs to move safely and meaningfully between people, organizations and technology systems.

This course introduces interoperability as the ability of different health information systems, devices, applications and organizations to access, exchange, integrate and use health data in a coordinated way.  In plain language, interoperability helps the right health information move to the right people, in the right place, at the right time.

Learners will explore interoperability through relatable healthcare examples, including urgent care while traveling, a patient’s care journey, hospital discharge information needs and the flow of clinical data from creation to use. The course also introduces clinical data exchange and explains why exchanged data must be understandable, reliable and usable for a real task.

No technical background is required. The course is designed for novice learners and uses simple language, practical examples and short knowledge checks to build confidence.

What You Will Learn

By the end of this course, learners will be able to:

•  Define interoperability in healthcare using plain language and why interoperability matters for patients, providers, payers and healthcare organizations.
•  Describe common ways interoperability is used across the healthcare ecosystem.
•  Explain how clinical data exchange supports care coordination, quality measurement, patient access, care management and public health reporting.
•  Describe how standards and frameworks can help systems communicate more consistently.

HEDIS® is a registered trademark of the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA).

Who Should Attend

• Health plans
• Health systems
• HIEs
• Data aggregators
• Health IT and technology vendors
• HEDIS reporting teams
• Quality analysts
• Compliance and Audit stakeholders
•  Professionals new to FHIR-based digital quality measurement  
  
  

Author

Allison Lance

Allison Lance, Senior Program Manager in Customer Education brings over 20 years of experience across the health care ecosystem, from payers to health IT to care delivery. Her expertise ranges from market strategy and population health to quality improvement and interoperability. Prior to her role at NCQA, she worked in market intelligence at one of the world’s leading Electronic Health Record (EHR) platforms and has experience from several health plans. During her time at NCQA, she built the Digital Hub and Community, which is a dynamic coalition of health quality measurement professionals, as well as leads development of the organization’s strategic plan for digital advancement. These resources help provide visibility to the roadmap for digitalizing health quality measures to be in alignment with CMS and Interoperability Standards. 

Allison holds a Master's in health care administration (MHA) from the University of Maryland and a bachelor's in human resources management from Missouri State University.

Continuing Education

This is a non-accredited activity.

Disclosure of Relevant Financial Relationships

The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) endorses the Standards of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education which specify that sponsors of continuing medical education activities and presenters at and planners for these activities disclose any relevant financial relationships either party might have with commercial companies whose products or services are discussed in educational presentations.

For sponsors, relevant financial relationships include large research grants, institutional agreements for joint initiatives, substantial gifts, or other relationships that benefit the institution.  For presenters or planning committee members, relevant financial relationships include the receipt of research grants from a commercial company, consultancies, honoraria, travel, or other benefits, or having a self-managed equity interest in a company; or having an immediate family member or partner with such a relationship.

Disclosure of a relationship is not intended to suggest or condone bias in any presentation but is made to provide participants with information that might be of potential importance to their evaluation of a presentation.

Relevant financial relationships exist with the following companies/organizations:

Faculty:

Allison Lance:  None


Additional Planning Committee Members:
Allison Lance: None