Across-provider patient history is most commonly provided by which data source?

• A. Personal electronic health records
• B. Payors claims data
• C. Smart Cards
• D. Cloud-based proprietary healthcare data

Answer: (B)

Across-provider patient history requires data that captures care across many different providers and settings. Payor claims data are the best source for this because almost every billable service a patient receives generates a claim that travels with the insurer across all providers involved in the patient's care. Those claims record when and where care happened, who delivered it, what diagnoses were treated, and what procedures were performed, creating a continuous timeline of care across hospitals, clinics, and specialists. This makes claims data a wide, longitudinal source of information that many organizations rely on to understand a patient’s care history beyond a single provider.

In contrast, personal electronic health records depend on patient-sharing and may be incomplete or fragmented if providers don’t exchange records. Smart cards mainly store identity and authorization details rather than a full clinical history. Cloud-based proprietary data can be siloed within a single vendor or system, so it may not be accessible across different providers without extensive integration.