Leaders at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center (UCSF Health) have penned a letter to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar in support of the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health Information Technology’s proposed interoperability rule.
“We support the proposed regulations because open, standardized API access to health data will help patients and providers manage care more effectively and achieve better health outcomes,” wrote the three authors of the letter, which was dated February 18.
The proposed rule aims to drive patient access to and sharing of their electronic health information, allowing them the ability to coordinate their own healthcare.
The rule also takes a strong stance against information blocking and aims to hold health IT developers accountable as a condition of certification.
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“Three years after the 21st Century Cures Act, the proposed regulations take a crucial step forward for nationwide interoperability and health care by requiring open, standardized application programming interfaces (APIs) for patient and population services,” UCSF President and CEO Mark Laret, Associate Chancellor for Informatics Michael Blum, MD, and Chief Information Officer Joe Bengfort.
“APIs and apps underpin our ability today to connect data, knowledge, and action seamlessly across so many walks of life, including social services, government services, banking, education, commerce, and transportation,” they continued. “Achieving nationwide interoperability and electronic information exchange in health care likewise depends upon standardized APIs.”
UCSF Health is the first major health system to back the ONC’s proposed rule after roughly 60 health systems sided with Epic CEO Judy Faulkner, co-signing an email she wrote asking hospital executives to take a stand against the rule.
Faulkner urged the executives to help delay the proposed regulations that are intended to make it easier to share medical information.
“ONC’s Proposed Rule could negatively affect patients and health care organizations,” Faulkner wrote in the email obtained by CNBC. “HHS needs to hear from you, so they understand that you are feel these issues are important. Very little time is left.”
“We are concerned that health care costs will rise, that care will suffer, and that patients and their family members will lose control of their confidential health information,” Faulkner continued.
Then, Epic posted a statement on its website stating that although the company agrees with the ONC to support patient data access, the proposed rule needs to be carefully crafted to protect patient privacy.
Epic targeted the lack of transparency requirements for mobile apps, noting healthcare apps may take excessive amounts of patient data and it isn’t always clear what the apps will do with the data. The vendor noted that 79 percent of healthcare apps resell or share data.
“We have always, and will always, support patients’ right to use their data as they see fit,” Epic stated on its website last month. “However, it is the role of government to ensure that patients have the information they need to make those decisions knowledgeably, like they have for nutrition and food or labels in the clothes they buy. Patients must be fully informed about how apps will use their data, and apps and other companies must be held accountable to honor the promises they made to patients.”
UCSF acknowledges this fear in its letter, stating a key issue of the rule is to ensure patient privacy and security of health data with the third-party mobile apps.
“Many stakeholders, including UCSF, are working to implement solutions which do not dictate or restrict patients’ choices to share their health data with third-party apps in order to track and manage their health care more effectively,” wrote the authors. “Patients are demanding this access and use, and the proposed regulations are essential to providing it.”
With the interoperability rule set to be released in the near future, add UCSF to the list of its many supporters, highlighted by Cerner, Apple, Microsoft, The Pew Charitable Trusts, and other stakeholders.
“The nation needs ONC’s proposed regulations, and UCSF strongly supports their release and implementation,” concluded the writers.
Source: EHR Intelligence