5 Things to Know About the Information Blocking Rule

Last year ONC and CMS proposed an information blocking rule to address some of the more significant and most persistent interoperability challenges in healthcare — the ability to send and receive patient records to and from different health organizations.

Here are five things you need to know about the rule before it goes into effect in the New Year.

1. Background: The information blocking rule was introduced to motivate provider organizations, health information exchanges, and health IT vendors to eliminate barriers to the free flow of electronic health information. With the comment period having ended in June 2019, the rule is now under review and is scheduled to be finalized and go into effect in January 2020.

2. Who will it impact? Anyone who has access to electronic health information will feel the effects of the new information blocking rule. Hospitals, health systems, and payer organizations will be mandated to address instances of information blocking and enable health data exchange.

3. What’s the motivation? The goal is to push the industry to become better at sharing patient records between organizations and with patients. Interoperability is a persistent challenge in the US healthcare system; the government's involvement signifies a move toward setting a baseline in expectations by making it a matter of compliance.

4. Is it a good idea? In theory, this rule is a good idea. With the HITECH Act, the assumption was that interoperability would be the natural outcome of everyone adopting EHRs. However, this has not happened as a result of business, operational, and cultural reasons. With the healthcare industry heavily reliant on technology, it is paramount that the industry addresses the challenges of information sharing.

5. Is it a bad idea? Potentially. Not everyone is in the same place with interoperability, which means healthcare organizations won’t be able to address the mandates of the rule at the same pace. Wealthier institutions will be able to meet the requirements more quickly thanks to financial resources and because they may have already taken steps to strategically address interoperability challenges before it became a matter of compliance. Rural, less financially secure institutions will have more work ahead of them, which could ultimately widen the gap between the haves and have nots of interoperability. However, if these smaller organizations are given deference, these negative consequences could be avoided altogether.

In the end, today’s interoperability challenges will only be compounded by tomorrow’s, so we hope this rule motivates organizations to think more strategically about how they address and pursue data integration. While the information blocking rule does make interoperability a matter of compliance, we urge organizations to zoom out and look at things from a more strategic and long-term perspective.

Despite concerns, we expect to see real benefits from a stronger interoperability foundation, improved outcomes, operational efficiency, and patient satisfaction. The information blocking rule should help alleviate some of these long-standing interoperability barriers, including those of business disincentives, technical issues, and operational barriers. If slow-to-adopt organizations are given a grace period with implementation incentives, and all health organizations begin to view interoperability as a core competency, this rule should see a great deal of success.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lyniate partners with healthcare organizations around the globe delivering cutting-edge solutions to address interoperability challenges. Our industry-leading products, Corepoint and Rhapsody, are used by thousands of customers to send hundreds of millions of messages every day. Lyniate is committed to delivering the best interoperability solutions for healthcare organizations, from specialty clinics to large networks, from payers to vendors, and everything in between. We’re building the future of interoperability.