Asymmetric Interoperability as a Strategy Among Provider Group Health Information Exchange: Directional Analysis

BACKGROUND: High levels of seamless, bidirectional health information exchange continue to be broadly limited among provider groups despite the vast array of benefits that interoperability entails for patient care and the many persistent efforts across the health care ecosystem directed at advancing interoperability. As provider groups seek to act in their strategic best interests, they are often interoperable and exchange information in certain directions but not others, leading to the formation of asymmetries. OBJECTIVE: We aimed to examine the correlation at the provider group level between the distinct directions of interoperability with regard to sending health information and receiving health information, to describe how this correlation varies across provider group types and provider group sizes, and to analyze the symmetries and asymmetries that arise in the exchange of patient health information across the health care ecosystem as a result. METHODS: We used data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which included interoperability performance information for 2033 provider groups within the Quality Payment Program Merit-based Incentive Payment System and maintained distinct performance measures for sending health information and receiving health information. In addition to compiling descriptive statistics, we also conducted a cluster analysis to identify differences among provider groups—particularly with respect to symmetric versus asymmetric interoperability. RESULTS: We found that the examined directions of interoperability—sending health information and receiving health information—have relatively low bivariate correlation (0.4147) with a significant number of observations exhibiting asymmetric interoperability (42.5%). Primary care providers are generally more likely to exchange information asymmetrically than specialty providers, being more inclined to receive health information than to send health information. Finally, we found that larger provider groups are significantly less likely to be bidirectionally interoperable than smaller groups, although both are asymmetrically interoperable at similar rates. CONCLUSIONS: The adoption of interoperability by provider groups is more nuanced than traditionally considered and should not be seen as a binary determination (ie, to be interoperable or not). Asymmetric interoperability—and its pervasive presence among provider groups—reiterates how the manner in which provider groups exchange patient health information is a strategic choice and may pose similar implications and potential harms as the practice of information blocking has in the past. Differences in the operational paradigms among provider groups of varying types and sizes may explain their varying extents of health information exchange for sending and receiving health information. There continues to remain substantial room for improvement on the path to achieving a fully interoperable health care ecosystem, and future policy efforts directed at advancing interoperability should consider the practice of being asymmetrically interoperable among provider groups.