Healthcare professionals’ cross-organizational access to electronic health records: A scoping review

Background

Cross-organizational access to shared electronic health records can enhance integrated, people-centered health services. However, a gap remains between these potential benefits and the limited support currently offered by electronic health records. The Valkyrie research project aims to bridge this gap by developing a technical prototype of an architecture to promote healthcare service coordination.

Objective

To inform the Valkyrie project, we aimed to evaluate approaches for healthcare professionals’ access to electronic health records across healthcare providers and identify factors influencing the success and failure of these approaches.

Materials and methods

Using the Joanna Briggs Institute guidance for scoping reviews, searches were conducted in six research databases and grey literature, without limitations on year or language. Papers selected for full-text review were analyzed, and data was extracted using standardized forms that reflected the population, concept, and context framework and the categorization model used in the qualitative analysis of the barriers and facilitators reported in the included papers.

Results

Among the 290 identified papers, five were deemed eligible for full-text review. The included papers were heterogeneous in country, year of publication, study setting, implementation level, and access approaches to electronic health records, highlighting various techniques, from federated to centralized, for accessing shared electronic health records.

Discussion and conclusion

The review did not identify one single superior access approach. However, a hybrid approach incorporating components from the different approaches combined with emerging technologies may benefit the Valkyrie project. The key facilitators were identified as improved information quality and flexible and easy access. In contrast, lack of trust and poor information quality were significant barriers to successful cross-organizational access to electronic health records. Future research should explore alternative access approaches, considering information quality, user training, and collegial trust across healthcare providers.