With healthcare organizations focused on battling COVID-19, the recent federal healthcare regulation requiring data interoperability may have become an afterthought. However, compliance with this rule will create a powerful tool for fighting COVID-19 recurrences and future pandemics.
If interoperability had gone into effect earlier this year as originally scheduled, many insurance companies and the federal government would now be able to securely share the data they have for most of the elderly patients on Medicare and more than half of the poor Americans on Medicaid. The industry might have identified COVID-19 risk factors more readily; attending physicians would have had more comprehensive data on which to base treatment decisions. Patients would have been able to use telehealth more effectively, with their healthcare history more readily available.
Data clearly is critical to the fight against COVID-19 and whatever future viruses and diseases emerge and travel the globe. The final interoperability rule issued by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) in March of this year will make healthcare data more widely and securely available. Although CMS recently announced a delay in enforcement until July of 2021, compliance remains an imperative, with deadlines for health insurers starting at the end of this year.
Source: Hit Consultant
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