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ONC Outlines Upcoming Cures Act Deadlines for Certified Health IT Vendors
The ONC Cures Act Final Rule requires certified health IT developers to update and provide their customers with FHIR-based certified API technology by December 31, 2022.
The 21st Century Cures Act infrastructure will come to fruition in 2022, with upcoming deadlines for the availability of standards-based FHIR application programming interfaces (APIs), according to a HealthITBuzz blog post.
The ONC Cures Act Final Rule requires certified health IT developers to update and provide their customers with FHIR-based certified API technology by December 31, 2022.
“We’ve been closely monitoring certified health IT developers’ progress in updating their technology to be certified to the Cures Update criteria, specifically, Standardized API for patient and population services,” ONC officials Avinash Shanbhag and Rob Anthony wrote in the blog post.
As of August 1, about five percent of certified health IT developers had updated their technology to certified API technology. However, that five percent support 66 and 77 percent of the in-patient and ambulatory users with their health IT modules nationwide, respectively.
“Further, the 2022 Standards Version Advancement Process (SVAP) now includes the HL7 FHIR US Core Implementation Guides 4.0.0 and 5.0.1, which some health IT developers were waiting for, and we anticipate that many health IT developers will now move forward to support these newer implementation specifications to certify to the FHIR-based API criterion,” the officials wrote.
Certification Program requirements also include “Conditions and Maintenance of Certification” for APIs, which outline requirements for certified health IT developers regarding transparency, fees, and market competition.
“A nationwide ecosystem of standard FHIR APIs will enable more innovation and solutions developed by industry and reduce one-off interfaces, resulting in lower interoperability costs in the future,” the blog authors wrote.
“Eligible hospitals and critical access hospitals participating in the Medicare Promoting Interoperability program, and eligible clinicians participating in the Promoting Interoperability performance category of the Merit-Based Incentive program, will be required to use certified technology updated with the 2015 Cures Update (including FHIR APIs) for performance periods starting in 2023,” the officials explained.