The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently proposed a new rule to support seamless and secure access, exchange, and use of electronic health information (EHI).
The proposed rule is designed to increase innovation and competition by giving patients and their healthcare providers secure access to health information and new tools, allowing for more choice in care and treatment. It calls on the healthcare industry to adopt standardized application programming interfaces (APIs), which will help allow individuals to securely and easily access structured EHI using smartphone applications.
The proposed rule places a strong focus on a patient’s ability to access their health information through a provision requiring that patients can electronically access all of their EHI (structured and/or unstructured) at no cost. Finally, to further support access and exchange of EHI, the proposed rule implements the information blocking provisions of the Cures Act. The rule proposes seven exceptions to the definition of information blocking.
Notice: This HHS-approved document has been submitted to the Office of the Federal Register (OFR) for publication and has not yet been placed on public display or published in the Federal Register. The document may vary slightly from the published document if minor editorial changes have been made during the OFR review process. The document published in the Federal Register is the official HHS-approved document. We’ll update HealthIT.gov once the proposed rule is published by the Federal Register.
Date: February 20, 2019
Source: HealthIT.gov
