Home Health & Hospice Week

Here’s what led to the latest proposals.

You won’t know your future if you don’t know your past, and that goes for health information technology regulations too.

The Department of Health and Human Services and auxiliary agencies have steadily been instituting data sharing policies since the Cures Act inception. Here’s a timeline of the particulars:

• December 2016: The 21st Century Cures Act is enacted.
• May 2020: The HHS Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology publishes the 21st Century Cures Act final rule and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services publishes the Interoperability and Patient Access final rule.
• 2021: During the height of the COVID-19 public health emergency, ONC begins implementing key policies from the Cures Act final rule. Guidance is across the board, including information blocking instruction for health software developers, health IT managers, providers, and more.
• June 2022: In the fiscal year 2023 budget, the feds add information blocking-centered provisions, including updated penalties and disincentives for violations as well as a request for a new authority for advisory opinions and policymaking.
• June 2023: Using the Cures Act guidelines, OIG publishes a civil monetary penalties (CMP) final rule, which sets up statutory penalties for information blocking violations for individuals and entities with a possible penalty as high as $1 million per violation, the watchdog agency explains in the rule.