STAT January 27, 2020
A proposed federal rule requiring that data flow freely between electronic health record systems and to third party apps makes sense and shouldn’t be blocked.
Epic, the nation’s largest electronic health record (EHR) company and a major beneficiary of a $48 billion Obama-era federal program to promote the adoption of EHRs, has launched a full-scale effort to block the flow of data out of its software and into apps that benefit doctors and patients. That’s wrong for many reasons.
Epic is attempting to scuttle finalization of a rule from the Department of Health and Human Services that would implement the interoperability and information blocking provisions of the 21st Century Cures Act. The thoughtfully crafted rule, proposed by the Office of...