OK, we’re almost there. Apply that to your life as you wish. We’re almost ready for the holiday season / kids being home during winter break. We’re almost done with all the end-of-year work deadlines. We’re almost able to see some really good new movies – Maestro, Poor Things, Wonka, American Fiction. We are almost free to really focus on whether Oprah’s recent weight loss is going to last this time (and what that means for these powerful weight loss drugs and Weight Watchers’ telehealth platform called Sequence). We are almost seeing real change in the health data exchange landscape, which we explain in our One Thoughtful Paragraph below.
Look here for news that shows how we are finally going to see health records move more easily from place to place and person to person:
- The HHS Office of National Coordinator of Health Information Technology (ONC) released the final HTI-1 rule, which will require electronic health record vendors to report on how they are accomplishing interoperability. This means that companies that have our health information must explain exactly how and when they are allowing individuals to access their own electronic health information. They also have to report what they’re doing about getting doctors clinical care information they need to serve patients, regardless of where they work and what computer system they use. There will finally be a check and balance on whether health data is going where it needs to go as quickly as possible. Full text here.
- ONC also happily announced the formal launch of TEFCA, the framework for nationwide network-to-network health information interoperability. There is a small group of “qualified health information networks” – CommonWell Health Alliance, eHealth Exchange, Epic Nexus, Health Gorilla, Kno2, and KONZA – that will get the party started on this secure exchange of information. Epic, for instance, announced that 498 hospitals have already agreed to join TEFCA.
- The CARIN Alliance, a multi-stakeholder industry collaboration that works with the federal government on improving the consumer-directed exchange of health information, developed a set of best practices for payers and electronic health record vendors on how to implement HL7® FHIR® APIs in anticipation of the release of the final CMS Advancing Interoperability and Improving Prior Authorization Processes Rule.
Are we there yet? You may never get there if you press “autopilot” on your Tesla, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the new (and terribly realistic) movie Leave the World Behind. Avoiding cars altogether, we attended the ONC Annual Meeting this week. A number of announcements were made about the impressive progress to improve the exchange of health information (see above in the news section). You may be asking – I’ve got SO much to do, why should I care about this right now? Because every American knows a story about someone who had to bring their medical records / lab results / x-ray images from one physician to another because it doesn’t happen automatically. In this age of auto-everything, that’s as ridiculous as the highway scenes in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. But now, when you gather this season with your family and friends, you can confidently say that doctors are going to start to get the clinical care information they need to serve patients. And unless Uncle Joe is actively blocking health information, he doesn’t have to worry about the large financial penalties that violators will suffer. Feel free to go ahead and get ready for the season – at least one federal agency is doing its job.
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