information blocking
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Health IT vendors slammed for hampering the exchange of patient data
Electronic health records vendors make the process of sharing patient information too expensive and complicated for hospitals and doctors, a problem that affects the quality and cost of care. That's the conclusion reached by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), the U.S. government agency that oversees the country's health IT efforts.
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HHS Releases Interoperability Rules
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) today proposed new rules to support seamless and secure access, exchange, and use of electronic health information. The rules, issued by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), would increase choice and competition while fostering innovation that promotes patient access to and control over their health information. The proposed ONC rule would require that patient electronic access to this electronic health information (EHI) be made available at no cost.
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HHS Releases Landmark Report: Reforming America's Healthcare System
On December 3, 2018, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released an extensive, 120-page report on the administration's proposals to reform the healthcare system. The report, titled Reforming America's Healthcare System Through Choice and Competition, is divided into four major sections. The report that government policy of the last few years has suppressed competition, increased prices for healthcare, and limited choices for consumers. Though rich in detail as it tries to prove each of these points, the more than fifty recommendations are often broad and aspirational rather than practical. Since I am not a health economist, I will leave the market issues to others to discuss (many of the ideas in this report have been vetted and discussed by others previously). But there are two sections of the report which make direct mention of Health IT.
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How Hospital Administrators Are Obstructing Medical Record Exchange APIs
Medical record exchange is a major topic in healthcare, needed to improve healthcare outcomes (and reduce costs) for multiple patients receiving care at multiple sites. The discussion in the industry primarily focuses on technical challenges. In reality, many of the technical challenges have been addressed. A big factor in the inability of medical record exchange is the hospitals themselves. They block information and APIs. I’ve had two experiences with getting medical records...
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How Hospital Administrators Are Obstructing Medical Record Exchange APIs
Medical record exchange is a major topic in healthcare, needed to improve healthcare outcomes (and reduce costs) for multiple patients receiving care at multiple sites. The discussion in the industry primarily focuses on technical challenges. In reality, many of the technical challenges have been addressed. A big factor in the inability of medical record exchange is the hospitals themselves. They block information and APIs. I’ve had two experiences with getting medical records...
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How to Prepare for the API Requirements of the Cures Act
As of April 5, 2021, the U.S. ONC Cures Act Final Rule Compliance Timeframe is in effect. Healthcare providers, Health IT developers, Health Information Exchanges (HIEs), and Health Information Networks (HINs) will have until October 6, 2022, to provide patients with access to all their Electronic Health Information (EHI). There are several requirements that providers, developers, and exchanges must adhere to. Among them are Conditions and Maintenance of Certification requirements for Information Blocking, Communications, and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). To help you navigate this compliance timeframe, we've asked our J P System's HL7 FHIR® expert, Jay Lyle, what does one need to know about APIs and data standards. Jay has been co-chair of the HL7 Patient Care Work Group for 8 years and is an expert in HL7 data standards development and APIs.
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Humetrix Presents Disruptive Personal Health App Solutions Before US Congress
As a former practicing physician, data scientist and public health officer, I became a healthcare IT entrepreneur focusing on mobile technology because I believed that the best way to treat patients, improve health outcomes, and reduce waste is to put patients’ critical health information into their own hands, so they can share that information with their physicians when needed. With 68 percent of Americans using a smart phone daily1, and new HIPAA rules giving each of us a legal right to electronically access our health records, consumer facing mobile health applications can be a cure to the information blocking which is still plaguing our health care system. In a healthcare environment in which one-third of expenditures are wasted3 on redundant care, and medical errors representing the third leading cause of death in the U.S. today4, having immediate access to a patient’s health history can literally save lives and also significantly reduce healthcare costs.
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Hurricanes Harvey and Irma Draw the Line - Time for the US to Embrace Open Source Emergency and Disaster Response
For nearly 20 years now the global open source community and applications have been a keystone to disaster relief efforts around the world. The enormous number of disaster relief applications and knowledge that has been developed through all these years, should, and needs to be leveraged in the current crisis. For that reason, Open Health News is starting a series of articles to highlight some of the most important solutions. A substantial portion the open source applications for emergency and disaster response that exist are actually already on the news website in the form of articles and resource pages.
- The Future Is Open
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Legislators: Expand EHR Anti-Kickback Safe Harbors
In a recent letter to Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Marilyn Tavenner and National Coordinator for Health IT Farzad Mostashari, House legislators call for the expansion of the physician self-referral law exception and anti-kickback statute safe harbor for electronic health records. Read More »
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Major Interoperability Initiative Launched During the Annual Meeting of The Sequoia Project
On December 5, 2019, HLN Consulting, LLC participated in The Sequoia Project's day long annual meeting which was held just outside of Washington, D.C. at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center. As a leading healthcare informatics consulting company HLN monitors developments in healthcare interoperability nationally with particular emphasis on the impact to public health agencies and their stakeholders. This conference represented a good opportunity to participate in the start of a major interoperability initiative that will play out over the next several years. In addition to this report, the Sequoia Project posted the proceedings of the meeting online, including the recorded discussions as well as the slides from the presentations. Read More »
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Number of Public HIEs Drop, Bringing Viability into Question
Despite federal funding that aided their creation, the number of community and state health information exchanges is declining as HIEs struggle to remain financially viable now that seed money has dried up. Those are among the results of a new national survey published in the July issue of Health Affairs that tracked community and state HIE efforts soon after federal funding ended. “We found 106 operational HIE efforts that, as a group, engaged more than one-third of all U.S. providers in 2014,” states the study’s authors...
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ONC calls out information blockers
Having received many complaints in recent months about vendors and providers engaging in information blocking, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT is "becoming increasingly concerned about these practices, which devalue taxpayer investments in health IT and are fundamentally incompatible with efforts to transform the nation’s health system."
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ONC Releases 2018 HITECH Report
In early January the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) issued its annual report to Congress for 2018 on the adoption of electronic health records (EHR) and interoperability. This report is required under the HITECH Act and is further informed by requirements of the later 21st Century Cures Act...One thing that I think is notable was a short discussion about barriers to interoperability that we have heard before. The report identifies three types: technical barriers, financial barriers, and trust barriers. Within trust barriers the report mentions legal incentives to keep data from moving (I guess that would have better been phrased as legal disincentives to sharing), but this misses the point: It is the patchwork of inconsistent and incompatible State and local laws and regulations - not intentional information blocking - that presents a bigger challenge and barrier.
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ONC Releases Final Rule on Interoperability: How Might it Affect Public Health?
On March 9, 2020 the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) released its final rule on the 21st Century Cures Act: Interoperability, Information Blocking, and the ONC Health IT Certification Program. Referred to by some people as the "Information Blocking Rule," since this is the primary topic, the document actually covers a host of other issues related to interoperability driven primarily by requirements of the 21st Century Cures Act. In addition to the final rule itself you can read the ONC press release, a comparison between the proposed and final rules, and lots of other resources.
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ONC Selects Noam Arzt to serve on the ONC Trusted Exchange Framework Task Force
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) has selected Dr. Noam H. Arzt, President of HLN Consulting (HLN), as a member of the Trusted Exchange Framework Task Force. This group of healthcare and health information technology specialists will advise ONC on various aspects of the Draft Trusted Exchange Framework. This framework outlines a common set of principles for trusted exchange of health information records and minimum terms and conditions for trusted exchange as directed by Congress in the 21st Century Cures Act.
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