In a previous blog, I discussed the importance of collaboration in the health information system using the Great Place To Work methodology as means to describe why some collaborations are more successful than others. This methodology values employees’ perception of Pride, Camaraderie and Trust. It simply defines trust as fairness, credibility and respect. It is absolutely necessary to have each element to achieve trust, and without trust, an organization cannot be “great.”
How do we build trust to ensure we treat every organization the same, regardless of size or complexity, when we’re talking about people and processes? We can’t show our respect only to the largest, most prestigious ones and not the others. We must ensure every player in the system feels their needs and input are valued and that we’re listening to them.
We must build credibility and respect—not by resting on our past accomplishments or boasting about our future plans but rather by being open and honest. Announcing we have great security is not the same as demonstrating it. We must treat everyone fairly. We must be transparent about what we are doing, how we are doing it and who we are doing it with. Collaboration helps us do this, but collaboration alone doesn’t create trust.
It’s taken a long time to build trust, but in my view, Hixny has. It used to be we didn’t have that data because we—and our user base—were still growing. Then, by becoming a part of the NCQA Data Aggregator Validation program in 2020, we helped our users support us in improving reliable data quality. Trust flows both ways.
We have to build trust in our technology to perform well and as we expect it to. When we deliver technology that is easy to use, seamless and capable, we earn people’s trust. We’ve seen this most recently through our SMART on FHIR application. In one hospital system alone, use increased over 900 percent in the first year after putting access to Hixny’s patient data right within existing workflows.
The same is true of our procedures, which rely on consistent, universally applied security standards and proper user screening. For example, we don’t provide anyone access to patient data in Hixny until we’ve been able to verify their identity—we use third parties to do this, sometimes the participant organizations themselves. This is one way we demonstrate trust in our participants and build trust with them to succeed.
Most importantly the Great Place To Work framework is not about what we do to build trust, but instead its about how what we do is perceived by those who rely on Hixny. What makes Hixny successful is collaboration and trust. It takes forever—or in our case, many years—to build but can be lost in a second. Our providers and the patients in our community place a great deal of trust in us. That’s why we take our users’ trust very seriously and will always do the things necessary to maintain it.
