Healthcare Providers: Prepare Now for New Information Blocking Prohibition | Holland & Knight LLP jdsupra.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from jdsupra.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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On November 4, 2020, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) published an Interim Final Rule with Comment Period (IFC) that delays compliance dates necessary to meet certain requirements related to information blocking initially finalized in the ONC Cures Act Final Rule (Final Rule) in March of 2020. The Final Rule implemented health IT provisions enacted under the 21
st Century Cures Act (the Cures Act) to achieve ubiquitous interoperability among health IT systems and to improve patient’s ability to access their electronic health information (EHI). Among these provisions is a prohibition of information blocking. This article will define information blocking, provide and explain exceptions to such practice, detail the IFC’s deadline extensions, and highlight key compliance concerns and solutions regarding these reforms.
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On Jan. 15, 2021, the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) posted additional Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on information blocking. The FAQs help resolve some of the lingering questions in the industry about complying with the regulatory requirements under the ONC’s Cures Act Final Rule regarding information blocking that are slated to become effective on April 5, 2021. We have summarized some of the key FAQs below.
Push vs. Pull (Proactive vs. Reactive Releases of EHI)
One of the primary issues that the industry has wrangled with is whether the information blocking rules require electronic health information (EHI) to be proactively “pushed” to patient portals, application programming interfaces (APIs) or other health information technology. The ONC confirmed that “there is no requirement under the information blocking regulations to proactively make available any EHI to patients or others who have not re
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The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has published a series of guides and tool kits to help tech developers get a jump on compliance with its 21st Century Cures Act Final Rule.
WHY IT MATTERS
The compliance dates for ONC s information blocking rules may have been pushed back due to the COVID-19 public health emergency, but they still draw nearer by the day.
ONC has provided these new resources meant to help the health IT developer community build products that meet the new certification requirements for standards-based APIs that can be used without special effort.
Among these new resources, the 2015 Edition Cures Update Key Dates compiles the timelines developers need to adhere to in the work to develop certified systems, and help them keep apprised of the requirements they must meet along the way.
Individual.
Reasonable cost-based fee, limited to labor for making copies, supplies for copying, actual postage and shipping, and costs of preparing a summary or explanation as agreed to by the individual.
Receiving an electronic copy of PHI through a non-internet-based method in response to an access request (e.g., by sending PHI copied onto electronic media through the US Mail or via certified export functionality).
Individual.
Reasonable cost-based fee, limited to labor for making copies and costs of preparing a summary or explanation as agreed to by the individual.
Electronic copies of PHI in an EHR received in response to an access request to direct such copies to a third party.