On Monday, March 9, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released its long-awaited final rules on interoperability, amidst growing concerns about the COVID-19 (or coronavirus) outbreak forcing HIMSS to cancel its annual conference where President Trump was set to announce the rule alongside HHS Secretary Alex Azar.
The two rules, issued by the HHS Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), implement key provisions of the 21st Century Cures Act of 2016, including giving patients electronic access to their health information and promoting the adoption of application programming interfaces (APIs) to improve interoperability.
NextGen Healthcare supports the federal government’s goal of improving interoperability and patient access to electronic health information and looks forward to working with clients and industry stakeholders to ensure compliance and the advancement of these goals.
The NextGen Healthcare regulatory team is currently analyzing the rules, which have far-reaching implications for our company, our clients, and for the healthcare industry as a whole. We will provide our detailed analysis and recommendations for clients in the days and weeks ahead.
For an initial overview of the rule, join our monthly Health Reform Simplified webinar on March 19 at 4PM ET.