Against the backdrop of an industry eagerly awaiting federal guidance on meaningful use Stages 2 and 3 and calls for pausing the program, the Government Accountability Office published findings from its deep dive into interoperability. 

Specifically, GAO looked at efforts by entities other than the federal government to develop infrastructure that could lead to nationwide interoperability of health information. The conclusion? Most of the 18 initiatives GAO reviewed “remain works in progress.” Moreover, in its report Electronic Health Records: Nonfederal Efforts to Help Achieve Health Information Interoperability, GAO identified five stubborn barriers to interoperability:

• Insufficiencies in health data standards
• Variation in state privacy rules
• Difficulty in accurately matching all the right records to the right patient
• The costs involved in achieving the goals
• The need for governance and trust among entities to facilitate sharing health information

Read more here: http://www.govhealthit.com/news/5-ehr-interoperability-obstacles