Interoperability in HME: From “someday” to today

Amber Raymundo
November 4, 2025
Interoperability

Interoperability is critical for today’s HME organizations. But in the daily chaos of patient care, vendor delays, and staffing challenges, it’s often put on the back burner. Postponing connected healthcare could be costing you. It’s Tuesday morning. Your intake team is still manually retyping yesterday’s faxed orders. They’re stressed. They’re behind. And the phone won’t stop ringing with new referrals. This is a common scenario in HME. Orders still arrive via fax, patient information is copied and pasted across multiple systems, and staff spend hours on repetitive tasks instead of focusing on patient care. Interoperability is the seamless data exchange of patient information across providers, payors, and partners. But it’s more than a technology initiative. It’s a strategic lever that protects revenue, improves operational efficiency, and helps patients get the care they need. In this blog, we explore why HME organizations continue to delay interoperability, the cost of waiting, and the business benefits of acting now.

The importance of interoperability
Why interoperability gets delayed
The cost of waiting
Interop as a business strategy
Turning interoperability into a reality

Why is interoperability important in healthcare?

For HME organizations, interoperability is a direct driver of operational performance and business outcomes.

Imagine an intake team that is no longer required to rekey orders from faxed documents into multiple systems. Patient profiles update automatically, insurance information is validated quickly, and orders are routed efficiently for fulfillment. All without manual intervention.

This directly translates into:

Faster cash flow: Clean, accurate claims reduce billing delays.
Reduced operational risk: Fewer manual errors mean fewer compliance issues.
Staff efficiency and retention: Teams focus on patient care instead of repetitive data entry.
Stronger referral relationships: Providers trust that their patients will receive timely, accurate service.

Interoperability in healthcare isn’t just an IT strategy. It’s a business imperative that affects every part of operations.

Why interoperability gets delayed

Interoperability isn’t delayed due to lack of importance. The fact is, urgent daily pressures often overshadow long-term strategy:

Operational urgency dominates: Staffing shortages, payor delays, and patient complaints create constant firefighting. Investing time in interoperability can feel secondary.
Misconception of technical complexity: Some leaders view it purely as an IT initiative, assuming it’s outside their sphere of influence.
Lack of external pressure: Without mandates or competitive urgency, interoperability often slips down the priority list.

While delays happen, these operational realities don’t reduce the real business cost of waiting.

The business cost of waiting

Every day interoperability sits on the back burner, your organization pays a price. Sometimes that cost isn’t always immediately visible:

Referral leakage: Delays frustrate referring providers, who may divert patients to competitors.
Revenue disruption: Missing or inaccurate patient data can stall claims, affecting cash flow.
Operational inefficiency: Manual order entry creates errors that require time and resources to correct.
Staff burnout: Repetitive tasks erode morale, increasing turnover and further straining operations.

Delaying interoperability doesn’t just slow processes. It impacts the organization’s bottom line and its ability to deliver high-quality patient care.

Making interoperability a reality

While the cost of waiting is high, the benefits of acting now are immediate. Moving interoperability from “someday” to today requires a structured approach that aligns technology with business goals.

Here’s how to turn interoperability into a reality in your organization:

Assess critical workflows
The first thing to do is understand where your organization is losing time, creating errors, or adding unnecessary complexity. Start by mapping how orders, referrals, and patient data flow through your business:

Who touches the information?
What systems are involved?
Where do delays or mistakes happen?

There will likely be obvious pain points. Maybe your intake team is spending hours manually entering faxed orders. Or maybe claims are delayed because insurance eligibility needs to be double checked.

These are the workflows where interoperability can have the biggest impact. By identifying them, you can prioritize the changes that deliver the fastest ROI.

Align technology with business goals
Next, it’s about making sure the technology you choose supports your strategic objectives. Ask what matters most to your organization right now:

Faster revenue cycles?
Fewer claim denials?
Better staff retention?
A smoother patient experience?

Once you’re clear on the outcomes, evaluate your technology options. The goal isn’t to implement every possible integration at once. It’s to choose the solutions that directly move the needle on the outcomes that matter.

For example, automating insurance verification can speed up claims and allow staff to focus on patients instead of paperwork. That’s a win you can see and measure.

Engage stakeholders across teams
Interoperability touches many parts of the business, which is why success depends on collaboration. Bring operations, finance, clinical staff, and IT together from the very start to offer transparency and build buy-in:

Walk through the current processes
Explain the planned improvements
Gather input

For instance, when your billing team sees that automated order validation will reduce errors, they become partners in the process rather than skeptics. Clear roles and responsibilities also make it easier to track progress and address issues quickly.

Start with high-impact integrations
It’s tempting to try tackling everything at once, but that’s a recipe for slow progress and frustration. Instead, focus on integrations that will create immediate value by picking workflows that:

Impact revenue
Reduce manual work
Improve patient satisfaction

For example, linking your order management system to a payor eligibility check can dramatically reduce claim denials and speed up order fulfillment.

Start small and prove value before expansion to help deliver quick wins—ultimately building momentum and helping teams see the tangible benefits of interoperability.

Measure and optimize
The work is not done after integration. Measurement is key. Set clear KPIs and track them over time:

Order processing times
Claim denial rates
Referral satisfaction
Staff efficiency

Compare results to your baseline to see how the integrations are improving performance. Maybe claim denials drop 25%, or staff save ten hours a week previously spent on manual entry.

Those numbers tell the story of how interoperability is driving real business value. Communicate these results, further fostering buy-in and transparency.

Foster a culture of collaboration
Finally, interoperability succeeds when everyone sees it as an enabler, not an extra burden. Provide training, celebrate wins, and encourage teams to give feedback on what’s working and what could be better.

Highlight success stories to create internal champions, like workflows becoming faster and less error prone. Over time, this cultural shift can help ensure that interoperability will become an integral part of your organization.

Treat interoperability as a series of wins

Interoperability isn’t a one-and-done project. It’s a series of connected steps. Each win builds momentum and confidence, from eliminating fax re-entry to automating eligibility checks.

When your staff sees those wins, they buy into the vision. And that’s how connected healthcare transforms from an abstract idea into a daily reality.

And you don’t have to do it alone. Brightree works with HME organizations to connect workflows, accelerate data exchange, and make healthcare interoperability stick.

Ready to make interoperability a reality? Learn how we can take you from “someday” to today.

Request a demo today for a closer look at Brightree.

See what Brightree can do for you

Amber Raymundo

In her position as director of product management, Amber brings over a decade of healthcare and information technology experience across various customer, sales, product development and strategic roles. She uses that expertise to support and strengthen Brightree’s resupply and e-Referral platforms and is currently focused on enhancing the resupply platforms with multi-therapy workflows and streamlining the physician ordering experience within the HME/DME platforms.