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CMS is turning to patients to help drive health information technology toward greater interoperability, accessibility, and usability – elusive goals that have not been reached by working with health care professionals and IT vendors alone.
“MyHealthEData makes it clear that patients should have access and control to share their data with whomever they want, making the patient the center of our health system,” Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said at the annual HIMSS conference. “Patients need to be able to control their information and know that it is secure and private. Having access to their medical information will help them make decisions about their care and have a better understanding of their health.”
She added that “once information is freely flowing from the patient to the provider, the advances in coordinated, value-based care and patient-centric care will be even greater than anything we can imagine today.”
Patients could share their data with applications designed to help them make more informed health care decisions of with their providers and caregivers to help better manage their care,” Ms. Verma said in an interview.
For example, the initiative could lead to the development of products such as the following:
- Mobile apps to help patients manage medications and medical appointments.
- Simple processes that carry patients’ data when they switch providers or health insurance plans.
- Wearables, such as step trackers or glucose monitors, that are linked to patients’ clinical record.
To get to this future health IT nirvana, CMS will need to address the ongoing interoperability issues that continue to plague EHRs. And that’s where CMS is turning its efforts back to helping clinicians.
The agency “will be announcing a complete overhaul of the meaningful use program for hospitals and the advancing care information performance category of the Quality Payment Program,” Ms. Verma announced at HIMSS.
A complete overhaul is “the appropriate approach,” and one that doctors could support, according to a spokesman for the American Medical Association. “We are not talking about painting the walls. We are talking about stripping things down to the bare studs and coming back to this and looking at it from a fresh start.
“We have a perfect storm of opportunity here to really rethink the program,” the spokesman said. “It’s not just rethinking the program from the standpoint of burden; it’s rethinking CMS programs from the standpoint of collapsing some of the reporting into to one holistic picture where the doctor is participating with their patients in chronic care or different care teams or the patient-centered medical home.”
And fixing those regulations is going to go a long way in helping patients to actually interact with their data and to really put them in the center of their care; this is especially important since EHRs are currently built to comply with reporting requirements and not necessarily to help improve care, the AMA spokesman noted. And while current patient portal requirements promote engagement, the information is not necessarily useful for patients.
“What we see as the next step is an opportunity here to reduce some of the prescriptive nature of the regulation on the design and use of EHRs,” the spokesman said. “It is an interesting way to look at it because, while we want to encourage patients to access their complete record set, the front-to-back side of their entire medical record is not always available due to EHR design.”
Indeed, at HIMSS Ms. Verma said that “for those of you that still subscribe to the outdated idea that you can deny patients’ access to their health records, I encourage you, in the strongest way, to change course and accept that those practices will come to an end.”
CMS currently does not have a specific timeline for all the aspects of the MyHealthEData initiative, but Ms. Verma did note that the agency already is working with vendors on one aspect: Blue Button 2.0, a developer-friendly, standards-based developer tool that will allow the creation of apps to connect Medicare claims data to programs that can help create context and make informed medical decisions easier.
In 2019, new EHR requirements will follow that will require data to be shareable in a more standardized manner.
“Through the MyHealthEData initiative, this administration is focused on putting patients first, truly first, by empowering them to make cost and quality decisions, and giving them the information they need to prevent disease and improve their health,” Ms. Verma said.
CMS is turning to patients to help drive health information technology toward greater interoperability, accessibility, and usability – elusive goals that have not been reached by working with health care professionals and IT vendors alone.
“MyHealthEData makes it clear that patients should have access and control to share their data with whomever they want, making the patient the center of our health system,” Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said at the annual HIMSS conference. “Patients need to be able to control their information and know that it is secure and private. Having access to their medical information will help them make decisions about their care and have a better understanding of their health.”
She added that “once information is freely flowing from the patient to the provider, the advances in coordinated, value-based care and patient-centric care will be even greater than anything we can imagine today.”
Patients could share their data with applications designed to help them make more informed health care decisions of with their providers and caregivers to help better manage their care,” Ms. Verma said in an interview.
For example, the initiative could lead to the development of products such as the following:
- Mobile apps to help patients manage medications and medical appointments.
- Simple processes that carry patients’ data when they switch providers or health insurance plans.
- Wearables, such as step trackers or glucose monitors, that are linked to patients’ clinical record.
To get to this future health IT nirvana, CMS will need to address the ongoing interoperability issues that continue to plague EHRs. And that’s where CMS is turning its efforts back to helping clinicians.
The agency “will be announcing a complete overhaul of the meaningful use program for hospitals and the advancing care information performance category of the Quality Payment Program,” Ms. Verma announced at HIMSS.
A complete overhaul is “the appropriate approach,” and one that doctors could support, according to a spokesman for the American Medical Association. “We are not talking about painting the walls. We are talking about stripping things down to the bare studs and coming back to this and looking at it from a fresh start.
“We have a perfect storm of opportunity here to really rethink the program,” the spokesman said. “It’s not just rethinking the program from the standpoint of burden; it’s rethinking CMS programs from the standpoint of collapsing some of the reporting into to one holistic picture where the doctor is participating with their patients in chronic care or different care teams or the patient-centered medical home.”
And fixing those regulations is going to go a long way in helping patients to actually interact with their data and to really put them in the center of their care; this is especially important since EHRs are currently built to comply with reporting requirements and not necessarily to help improve care, the AMA spokesman noted. And while current patient portal requirements promote engagement, the information is not necessarily useful for patients.
“What we see as the next step is an opportunity here to reduce some of the prescriptive nature of the regulation on the design and use of EHRs,” the spokesman said. “It is an interesting way to look at it because, while we want to encourage patients to access their complete record set, the front-to-back side of their entire medical record is not always available due to EHR design.”
Indeed, at HIMSS Ms. Verma said that “for those of you that still subscribe to the outdated idea that you can deny patients’ access to their health records, I encourage you, in the strongest way, to change course and accept that those practices will come to an end.”
CMS currently does not have a specific timeline for all the aspects of the MyHealthEData initiative, but Ms. Verma did note that the agency already is working with vendors on one aspect: Blue Button 2.0, a developer-friendly, standards-based developer tool that will allow the creation of apps to connect Medicare claims data to programs that can help create context and make informed medical decisions easier.
In 2019, new EHR requirements will follow that will require data to be shareable in a more standardized manner.
“Through the MyHealthEData initiative, this administration is focused on putting patients first, truly first, by empowering them to make cost and quality decisions, and giving them the information they need to prevent disease and improve their health,” Ms. Verma said.
CMS is turning to patients to help drive health information technology toward greater interoperability, accessibility, and usability – elusive goals that have not been reached by working with health care professionals and IT vendors alone.
“MyHealthEData makes it clear that patients should have access and control to share their data with whomever they want, making the patient the center of our health system,” Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said at the annual HIMSS conference. “Patients need to be able to control their information and know that it is secure and private. Having access to their medical information will help them make decisions about their care and have a better understanding of their health.”
She added that “once information is freely flowing from the patient to the provider, the advances in coordinated, value-based care and patient-centric care will be even greater than anything we can imagine today.”
Patients could share their data with applications designed to help them make more informed health care decisions of with their providers and caregivers to help better manage their care,” Ms. Verma said in an interview.
For example, the initiative could lead to the development of products such as the following:
- Mobile apps to help patients manage medications and medical appointments.
- Simple processes that carry patients’ data when they switch providers or health insurance plans.
- Wearables, such as step trackers or glucose monitors, that are linked to patients’ clinical record.
To get to this future health IT nirvana, CMS will need to address the ongoing interoperability issues that continue to plague EHRs. And that’s where CMS is turning its efforts back to helping clinicians.
The agency “will be announcing a complete overhaul of the meaningful use program for hospitals and the advancing care information performance category of the Quality Payment Program,” Ms. Verma announced at HIMSS.
A complete overhaul is “the appropriate approach,” and one that doctors could support, according to a spokesman for the American Medical Association. “We are not talking about painting the walls. We are talking about stripping things down to the bare studs and coming back to this and looking at it from a fresh start.
“We have a perfect storm of opportunity here to really rethink the program,” the spokesman said. “It’s not just rethinking the program from the standpoint of burden; it’s rethinking CMS programs from the standpoint of collapsing some of the reporting into to one holistic picture where the doctor is participating with their patients in chronic care or different care teams or the patient-centered medical home.”
And fixing those regulations is going to go a long way in helping patients to actually interact with their data and to really put them in the center of their care; this is especially important since EHRs are currently built to comply with reporting requirements and not necessarily to help improve care, the AMA spokesman noted. And while current patient portal requirements promote engagement, the information is not necessarily useful for patients.
“What we see as the next step is an opportunity here to reduce some of the prescriptive nature of the regulation on the design and use of EHRs,” the spokesman said. “It is an interesting way to look at it because, while we want to encourage patients to access their complete record set, the front-to-back side of their entire medical record is not always available due to EHR design.”
Indeed, at HIMSS Ms. Verma said that “for those of you that still subscribe to the outdated idea that you can deny patients’ access to their health records, I encourage you, in the strongest way, to change course and accept that those practices will come to an end.”
CMS currently does not have a specific timeline for all the aspects of the MyHealthEData initiative, but Ms. Verma did note that the agency already is working with vendors on one aspect: Blue Button 2.0, a developer-friendly, standards-based developer tool that will allow the creation of apps to connect Medicare claims data to programs that can help create context and make informed medical decisions easier.
In 2019, new EHR requirements will follow that will require data to be shareable in a more standardized manner.
“Through the MyHealthEData initiative, this administration is focused on putting patients first, truly first, by empowering them to make cost and quality decisions, and giving them the information they need to prevent disease and improve their health,” Ms. Verma said.