The ONC's Cures Act Final Rule was created as a means to give patients easy and secure access to their electronic health information through the application of their choice, with relatively no cost and in a timely fashion. As part of the Cures' rule, the ONC created Information Blocking provisions to help ensure that clinicians and Health IT Developers were not blocking timely patient access to their Electronic Health Information, which has been defined by the United States Core Data for Interoperability (USCDI) V1.
What This Means for Clinicians
Starting April 5, 2021, upon patient request, clinicians should be able to electronically grant patients access to their electronic health information through the application of their choice and in a timely fashion. Click here to learn more about how to setup database's CCDAs to meet the Information Blocking requirements and click here to learn how to provide this access in our application. As part of your MIPS Promoting Interoperability attestation, you will also attest to the prevention of information blocking attestation.
We also encourage you to read up on the ONC's Cures Act Final Rule and also read through the many Fact Sheets and FAQs to ensure your practice is up to date on this regulation and it's impact to your providers and practice.
What This Means for Health IT Developers
By April 5, 2021, Health IT developers must update their applications to support the capture of the necessary data in the USCDI and update their CCDA files and ONC Certified APIs to include access to the required EHI data elements. We have completed these updates and you can learn more about them here.
More regulatory updates will be required by Health IT Developers in the coming months and years. Please reference the ONC's Cures Act Final Rule Highlighted Regulatory Dates timeline below for a high-level overview of these key dates and requirements.
