HHS Issues Final Interoperability and Patient Access Rule

On Monday, March 9, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued The Interoperability and Patient Access final rule (CMS-9115-F) from CMS and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC).

The rule finalizes new policies aimed at giving patients access to their health information, using CMS's authority to regulate Medicare Advantage (MA), Medicaid, CHIP, and Qualified Health Plan (QHP) issuers on the Federally-facilitated Exchanges (FFEs). Currently these data are held by health insurers, hospitals, and vendors of electronic health records (EHRs).

New policies include:

• Patient Access API (applicable Jan.1, 2021)
• Provider Directory API (applicable Jan.1, 2021)
• Payer-to-Payer Data Exchange (applicable Jan.1, 2022)
• Improving the Dually Eligible Experience by Increasing the Frequency of Federal-State Data Exchanges (applicable April 1, 2022)
• Public Reporting and Information Blocking (applicable late 2020)
• Digital Contact Information (applicable late 2020)
• Admission, Discharge, and Transfer Event Notifications (applicable fall 2020)
  

Read CMS fact sheet.

Posted 3/10/2020