Can Offering Patients’ Access to PHR Improve the Sustainability of HIEs?

Health Information Exchange (HIE) are multi-sided platforms that facilitate the sharing of patient health information between providers, payers, etc. across organizations within a region, community or hospital system. HIE benefits to payers and providers include lower cost, faster services, and better health outcome. These benefits are not achieved unless patients consent to share their records. In this research we investigate if HIEs can increase consent rates by offering PHR services to patients and making them active participants in the HIE system. The paper makes a theoretical contribution to research by extending the UTAT model with two types of trust that are critical for patient consent. The findings impact practice. Utilizing 395 participants in a randomized experimental survey design and multi-group invariance structural equation modeling (SEM) we find that PHR will help sustain HIE. In addition, PHR empowers trust in the system and the users