ONC Previews Interoperability Plans

According to National Coordinator for Health Information Technology Don Rucker, M.D., the Department of Health and Human Services will release a request for information in the coming months seeking input on reporting criteria for the Electronic Health Record Reporting Program, required by the 21st Century Cures Act of 2016 to provide public comparative information on certified health information products. Blogging about the agency’s plans to make health information more interoperable, Rucker said ONC also plans this fall to release a draft strategy to reduce provider burden and a notice of proposed rulemaking to update the ONC Health IT Certification Program. Other future plans include rulemaking to drive access to clinical data through application programming interfaces and identify behaviors not considered information blocking, he said.