ONC outlines steps to improve EHRs for clinicians and patients

PARCA – June 19, 2018 – The transition to electronic health records (EHRs) has engendered frustration among clinicians who expected computers to make their care more efficient, and among their patients who expected timely access to their information and seamlessly coordinated care.

To address these challenges, ONC will continue to work with stakeholders and federal agencies to implement key provisions of the Cures Act. Specifically,

• ONC will engage in rule-making to drive patient, clinician, and payer access to clinical data by advancing proposals related to application programming interfaces (APIs). 
• Rule-making will also identify behaviors not considered information blocking which will assist the HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) in their enforcement of Cures Act’s provisions that prohibit information blocking. 
• We will advance a Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement to improve data sharing across disparate health information networks. 

Additionally, we will develop a strategy with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to reduce administrative and reporting burden among clinicians.

Our guiding principle is to make policy choices that will give consumers, clinicians, and innovators more options for getting to and using health information.

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Source: Health ITBuzz blog