How state laws affect health information sharing practices

Recent increases in the use of health information technology (health IT) and electronic health records (EHR) provide avenues to untapped potential for improving health care productivity and efficiency. Health information exchanges, or HIEs, store health information so that patient care can be tracked even when it spans multiple health care providers. However, despite the promising nature of the rapidly growing amount of digital health information, health information sharing has had little effect on health care to date.