Health Affairs March 20, 2020
On March 9, 2020, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released a 474-page final rule designed to help patients more easily access their complete health information in interoperable forms across the many programs that CMS administers. At the same time, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released a separate 1,244-page final rule on interoperability, information blocking, and the health information technology (IT) certification program. The rules were issued alongside a press release and fact sheets (for CMS and ONC).
In the two highly anticipated rules, HHS lays out a vision where a patient’s health information can move seamlessly between health plans and providers and...