CMS Announces Initiative to Expand Patient Access to E-health Records

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services today announced MyHealthEData, a federal initiative to expand patient access to their medical data electronically. The White House Office of American Innovation will lead the initiative, which will also include the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, the National Institutes of Health and Department of Veterans Affairs. As part of the initiative, CMS intends to refocus its Medicare and Medicaid Electronic Health Record Incentive Programs and the Advancing Care Information performance category of the Quality Payment Program for clinicians on interoperability, and “to reduce the time and cost required of providers to comply with the programs’ requirements.” Chantal Worzala, AHA vice president of policy, said, “America’s hospitals and health systems are strongly committed to the use of technology to provide high-quality coordinated care, support new models of care, and engage patients in their health. While the meaningful use program was successful in encouraging adoption of EHRs, it is now time to allow hospitals and clinicians to determine how best to leverage technology to support the secure exchange of health information to improve care and engage patients. The AHA looks forward to working with CMS to develop more flexible and less burdensome meaningful use requirements and MIPS/ACI options that are aligned across programs. We also believe a 90-day reporting period should be the standard for meaningful use. We are concerned, however, that the 2015 Edition Certified EHRs rely on immature standards, allow for variations in APIs across vendors, and are not yet widely available to providers.”