The 2025 Guide to Healthcare Interoperability for Specialty Practices

Interoperability is critical for healthcare practices in 2025. It’s how information systems, devices, and applications securely connect to share data.

Interoperability makes it possible for you to understand what issues your patient’s primary care doctor uncovered in their last exam, and see what happened when they went to an emergency room while they were on vacation.

Interoperability is the evolution of meaningful use, introduced in 2011 to improve American healthcare through the sharing of data.

What Is Healthcare Interoperability, And How Does It Work?

Interoperability lets information systems securely communicate with one another. In healthcare, it began as intranetwork: health systems used interoperability to make sure the lab, billing department, and various specialty providers under their umbrella could easily and securely share patient information.

Today, interoperability allows providers to share information across network and geographic boundaries. Thanks to interoperability, you can see if the drug you plan to prescribe for your patient’s eye infection might interact with a prescription they take for a heart condition.

Patients don’t need to understand and remember everything about their medical history, because the provider can access what they need. Interoperable systems can pull data in real time so they are always up to date.

Why Healthcare Interoperability Is Important

Interoperability isn’t some pointless mandate. It has real benefits for providers and the patients they serve. The benefits of interoperability include:

• Better health outcomes for patients
• Increased patient engagement
• Efficient processing of healthcare claims
• More complete public data insights

Interoperability Leads to Better Patient Outcomes

Patients don’t always know what part of their lifestyle or medical history could be pertinent to the issue they’re suffering right now. Without access to their complete, up-to-date medical record, clinicians are forced to operate only on the information the patient thought to share.

For instance, a patient with prediabetes may not think their condition is serious enough yet to tell their ophthalmologist, so the doctor won’t realize they should have a retinopathy screening. A dermatologist might prescribe a new medication for a skin condition, unaware that their middle-aged patient had an allergic reaction to an ingredient in that drug when they were a teenager.

Interoperability also means patients don’t have to deal with multiple tests or repetitive interviews, since every provider on their healthcare team has access to the same labs, radiology images, and interview answers.

Interoperability Promotes Patient Engagement

Interoperable health records empower patients to take a more active role in their own healthcare. They can view their own complete health record, allowing them to notify the appropriate provider if a test or procedure they remember having is missing.

Interoperability provides a holistic view of a person’s overall health, enabling and encouraging positive lifestyle changes to manage conditions the patient might not otherwise have realized were interrelated.

Interoperability Gets Claims Processed Faster

The length of time between healthcare services and reimbursement is a headache for most medical providers. Interoperable systems smooth the billing and claims process, getting payments into the system faster.

Interoperability means billing and claims processing teams have more complete and accurate information at their fingertips. This helps increase the number of claims accepted and paid on the first attempt, saving time and money spent in adjudication.

Interoperability Promotes Public Health

Interoperable systems are a game changer for public health. They help researchers find candidates for health studies, and enable physicians to connect their patients with pharmaceutical trials.

Anonymized healthcare data from interoperable systems gives public health agencies an accurate snapshot of public health among regions or demographics. The holistic nature of this data provides early warnings about disease outbreaks and other rising health concerns.

How the Right EHR Leverages Interoperability to Help Your Practice

Though an interoperable electronic health records (EHR) system is a requirement for maximizing Medicare reimbursements, not all EHRs are created equal. The right EHR does more than meet minimum compliance requirements; it helps your practice leverage interoperability to become more profitable.

EHRs Eliminate Data Overwhelm

One of the earliest complaints providers had about meaningful use was that they were suddenly drowning in data. When a patient’s entire health record was before them, it was time-consuming and tedious to find the information they needed.

An advanced EHR designed for your specialty preserves data access but eliminates overwhelm. Smart technology sorts and categorizes relevant information from multiple sources, so what you need is clearly presented in a single screen. When you need deeper data, it’s right at your fingertips.

When your EHR leverages interoperability the right way, it makes workflows smoother and helps your staff get more done in less time. Routine communication like prescription management can be automated. Repetitive data entry is a thing of the past, as smart forms prepopulate with information found elsewhere in the record.

EHRs Format Data to Be Shared

More than a decade after meaningful use was introduced, there is still no single standard in the healthcare industry for data formats. This can create interoperability challenges as systems attempt to read data not formatted in the way they expect.

The industry’s best EHRs use a common data structure that is read by most healthcare systems. FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) is the most common framework, adopted by most major American healthcare systems, Medicare, and the Veterans’ Affairs Administration.

As EHR technology continues to progress, variations in data formatting may become less of an issue. Smart systems powered by artificial intelligence (AI) may be better equipped to understand and translate data into the appropriate format for use.

EHRs Futureproof Your Practice

The right EHR doesn’t just keep your practice compliant today. It positions you to be both compliant and competitive in the future.

Patients have come to expect easy access to their health information, and they’re not happy when they can’t get it. They also expect the providers in their network to communicate, and for every provider to have a complete understanding of their health. Providers whose EHRs don’t provide this level of insight will soon find themselves at a competitive disadvantage.

Forward-looking EHRs are incorporating AI into their interoperable technologies. As the healthcare industry deals with a global staffing shortage, AI-enabled EHRs keep productivity high by eliminating manual input and sharing of data.

AI’s ability to make sense of differing data structures and to combine and interpret data from multiple sources will put practices using it at the forefront of useful health insights.

Your Practice Needs to Comply With Interoperability Standards

The U.S. government has made interoperability a core part of its vision for American healthcare. Providers who aren’t on board will be more than left behind — they may find themselves subject to penalties for noncompliance.

Healthcare interoperability only works when all the stakeholders agree on standards, technology, and terminology. While some things, such as data formats, remain to be standardized, the government has taken steps to promote interoperability.

• In 2009, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act required healthcare providers to start shifting from paper to electronic files.
• In 2016, the 21st Century Cures Act required EHR vendors to provide patient-facing capabilities.
• TEFCA (Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement) was introduced in 2018 to remove barriers to information sharing. This framework creates networks across the country of providers who share either a geographic region or an EHR vendor. The goal is for these hubs to eventually connect with one another, leading to a single, national health information ecosystem.

The government has also taken steps to limit information blocking, the accidental or deliberate obstruction to access, exchange, or use of data.

Sometimes information blocking happens accidentally, because of an organization’s lack of technical expertise or because it uses outdated EHR technology. Sometimes it happens deliberately as providers try to hold back information they see as a competitive advantage.

The 21st Century Cures Act forbids information blocking, with eight specific exceptions. Practices found guilty of information blocking can be subject to fines of up to $1 million per violation.

Make Interoperability Work for You

An advanced, interoperable EHR is more than a compliance tool. It’s a competitive advantage.

Nextech’s platform includes EHR and practice management systems specifically designed to help dermatology, plastic surgery, ophthalmology, orthopedic, and med spa practices leverage technology for better care and more efficiency.

Request a demo today to see what Nextech could do for your practice.