Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Seema Verma has announced the administration's new MyHealthEData, an initiative that aims to give Americans more complete access to their healthcare data. She made the announcement in an address on March 6, 2018, at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Annual Conference in Las Vegas. The government-wide initiative is being led by the White House Office of American Innovation with participation from the Department of Health and Human Services, including CMS; Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC); the National Institutes of Health; and the Department of Veterans Affairs. 

As part of MyHealthEData announcement, CMS also announced that the agency intends to "overhaul" the EHR Incentive Programs to "refocus the programs on interoperability and to reduce the time and cost required" for providers to meet requirements. 

In her remarks, Administrator Verma also described Medicare's Blue Button 2.0 - a tool that would allow Medicare beneficiaries to access and their personal health data in a "universal digital format."  

As part of this initiative, the administration is also calling on healthcare insurers to follow suit and give patients access to their claims data in a digital format. 

The administration is still developing a timeline for the initiative, Verma said in an interview with Bloomberg BNA. 

Read the CMS press release.
Read the CMS fact sheet. 

Posted 3/7/18