Too Much Data, Not Enough Data: Providing Relevance to Care Connectivity Consortium Providers and Their Patients

The Care Connectivity Consortium (CCC), a consortium of five leading U.S. healthcare organizations was recently formed to help promote electronic transfer of health information across the country. Electronic health information transfer has also become a mandate for "Meaningful Use" in a recent provision of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Working from the hypotheses that more data are not always helpful when transferred electronically, this DNP scholarly project identified what electronic data are relevant to specialty, patient type, patient acuity and chronicity of illness by surveying CCC clinicians. It also determined what clinicians consider to be trustable data, what data should be exchanged during emergent situations and what time limitations may be placed on certain data categories. Survey questions on these topics were determined after an extensive review of the literature. The following Essentials of Doctoral Education for Advanced Nursing Practice criteria helped guide this project development. These include: Essential I: Scientific Underpinnings for Practice, Essential II: Organizational and Systems Leadership for Quality Improvement and Systems Thinking, Essential III: Clinical Scholarship and analytical Methods for Evidence Based Practice, Essential IV: Utilizing Information Systems/Technology for the Improvement and Transformation of Health Care, Essential VI: Interprofessional Collaboration for Improving Patient and Population Health Outcomes, Essential VII: Clinical Prevention and Population Health for Improving the Nation's Health, and Essential VIII: Advanced Nursing Practice (2006). The philosophical foundation of the project is based on the Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom (DIKW) theoretical framework taken from the Graves and Corcoran (1989) article "The Study of Nursing Informatics". Methodology for the project was modeled in part using a modified Delphi technique. The survey was administered electronically or by paper survey to 159 CCC clinicians across the country. Evaluation of results was accomplished with the help of content experts from the CCC. The final evaluation relating to the success of the project will be realized if survey recommendations are incorporated into the CCC data exchange structure, which is outside the DNP project scope Relevant, pertinent and timely electronic data passed through a health information exchange must become a recognized and critical component in providing better patient care. Knowing and understanding the exact health information that specific providers need at certain point in the treatment process will only enhance the quality of care given to patients. This survey has begun the exploratory process of identifying what health information should be exchanged.