Medicare Compliance & Reimbursement

On the one hand, the government is pushing all medical practices to adopt electronic health records (EHRs) as quickly as possible. On the other, federal agencies are looking into how some medical practitioners are blocking other doctors from electronically sharing health information with them.

“We have received many complaints of information blocking,” Karen B. DeSalvo, MD, national coordinator for health information technology, told the New York Times in a May 26 article on the topic. At issue is whether some practitioners are refusing to share health information electronically with medical professionals who they deem to be competitors, the Times noted.

Physicians are reporting that they are unable to send records to partnered hospitals where they refer patients, which slows down the patient admission process and may even cause multiple practitioners to have to repeat work unnecessarily. To stem the issue, Congress approved a bill last month restricting doctors and hospitals from blocking information sharing if they accept federal bonuses for their EHR use. Another bill proposes fining those who use information blocking up to $10,000 per offense, according to the Times report.