“Through two immense proposed rules released this morning, the first day of the HIMSS19 conference in Orlando, federal health officials are pulling an array of levers that fall under the core aim to improve interoperability and patient access to data.”
“The two proposed rules — one from CMS (the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) and one from ONC (the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT) are separate, but at the same aligned as the two agencies within HHS (the Department of Health & Human Services) look to further advance the nation’s healthcare interoperability progress. The two rules represent great significance for health IT stakeholders, who will now be more under the microscope than ever before as it relates to their efforts in making sure that health information is seamlessly moving—while not restricting such efforts.”
“The ONC rule, titled “21st Century Cures Act: Interoperability, Information Blocking, and the ONC Health IT,” is 724 pages in length, and according to federal health IT officials, is designed to increase innovation and competition by giving patients and their healthcare providers secure access to health information and new tools, allowing for more choice in care and treatment. It calls on the healthcare industry to adopt standardized application programming interfaces (APIs), which will help allow individuals to securely and easily access structured electronic health information (EHI) using smartphone applications, officials attested…” Read the full article here.
Source: Massive Rule Drops at HIMSS19: CMS, ONC Propose New Regulations to Transform the Future of Interoperability and Patient Access – By Rajiv Leventhal, February 11, 2019. Healthcare Innovation.
