Health IT vendors generally express support for disincentives to block HHS information
When the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released its final rule the codification of the financial discouragement by the Office for Civil Rights against provider organizations that were guilty of blocking information, there was a swift response and most industry organizations were not satisfied with it.
The purpose of such sanctions, which can be significant for non-compliant health systems, is of course to deter organizations from blocking information.
But hospitals and physician groups complain — echoing what they said about the proposed rules drafted last fall — that the disincentives laid out in the June 24 final rules are “excessive” and potentially counterproductive to the larger goal of value-based care.
As finalized, the new rules are “unnecessary penalties that will financially harm practices and negatively impact Medicare patients,” the Medical Group Management Association said last week. The American Hospital Association, for its part, said it is “deeply concerned that the disincentive structure retained in the final rule is excessive, confusing and unbalanced.”
But others in the health care industry – admittedly not the providers bound by these rules – have a more optimistic view of what enforcing information blocking could mean for patients. Healthcare IT News received mixed reactions to the final rule from leaders of several technology companies whose tools are used in healthcare. Here’s what they had to say.
‘Fundamental duty’
“I admire the ONC and CMS for passing the 21st Century Cures Act,” said Dr. Jay Anders, Chief Medical Officer at analytics developer Medicomp Systems. “The stiff penalties it now imposes provide a strong incentive for compliance. It’s important to remember that patients suffer when their medical records aren’t readily available when they need them. If we’re going to bend the cost curve in U.S. healthcare, we need to have a complete medical record for every patient. The lack of shared patient information is not only costly, it can be deadly.”
Another medical director agreed that the severity of the penalties was a necessary part of helping to prevent the very damaging effects of information blocking.
“The ONC drew a deep, hard line in the sand, creating enormous economic and reputational risks, with fines of up to $1 million, and so far, at least, indicating that nearly all of the 1,000 complaints reported to date meet the Office of the Inspector General’s criteria for investigation,” said Dr. Colin Banas, CMO at DrFirst, which develops patient-centric medication management tools. “This portends a painful reckoning for any healthcare professional who impedes patient access and progress at this stage of advancing interoperability.”
“Data is the single most important ingredient in our ability as a nation to transform healthcare,” added Greg Miller, vice president of business development at Carta Healthcare, whose products focus on clinical data abstraction. “Access to and dissemination of quality data is essential to improving patient outcomes. Limiting data access and interoperability harms the quality of patient care, increases costs, and significantly reduces customer (patient) satisfaction.”
Sandra Johnson, senior vice president of customer service at EHR developer CliniComp, said she hoped the final regulations would clear the way for more free flow of data that could be aggregated and accessed to improve patient care.
“What’s needed to handle all the incoming data is technology designed to seamlessly integrate and present data from different sources, providing a holistic view of patient health,” she said. “By facilitating unrestricted access to electronic health information, we can promote coordinated and efficient care across the health system.”
Kim Perry, chief growth officer at emtelligent, which develops natural language processing for a range of clinical use cases, added that robust information is critical to care coordination and in fact aligns with a “fundamental imperative to do what’s right for our patients and the healthcare community; it also helps unlock the full value of EHR records for providers, patients and entire populations.”
Zack Tisch, senior vice president of healthcare services at Pivot Point Consulting, said it’s high time HHS holds health care providers accountable for their data-sharing practices.
“After years of encouraging EHR platforms, application vendors, and health information networks to ‘eat their carrots’ in the name of better, more coordinated care, Health & Human Services is now launching a long-awaited enforcement mechanism: significant financial penalties tied to Medicare Reimbursement, MIPS, and the Medicare Shared Savings Program for non-participating entities,” Tisch said.
“While these standards and expectations have been in place for years, we will likely continue to face challenges around implementation. Healthcare systems of all sizes and types are struggling to find the money, resources, and time to implement the various IT requirements currently on their roadmap. These requirements often include: interoperability, cloud migration, nearshoring/offshoring, AI/automation-based workflow optimization, self-service analytics, digital transformation, and more.
“By more rigorously and with full transparency policing of information,” he added, the hope is to “advance the overarching goals of the 21st Century Cures Act: fostering a health care ecosystem where data flows freely and securely to support patient-centered care and innovation.”
Mike Miliard is Editor-in-Chief of Healthcare IT News
Email the author: mike.miliard@himssmedia.com
Healthcare IT News is a publication of HIMSS.