On August 1, 2022, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced final changes to its payment program for acute care hospitals in 2023. The FY 2023 Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) final rule also included policies for the 2023 Medicare Promoting Interoperability Program, which rewards eligible hospitals and critical access hospitals (CAHs) for the meaningful use of certified electronic health record (EHR) technology, and for the Inpatient Quality Reporting Program, which requires hospitals to report data in key areas.  

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ONC recently held a health care provider-focused workshop and guided discussion on opportunities and challenges related to sharing electronic health information (EHI). More than 200 people involved with utilizing health information technology (health IT) to share EHI participated in the half-day workshop. They also provided perspectives on October 6, 2022, when the definition of “information blocking” no longer limits its focus to the subset of EHI represented by data elements in the United States Core Data for Interoperability version 1 (USCDI v1).

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The pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic revealed gaps in the nation’s public health infrastructure that pose challenges to effective communication between health care providers and public health agencies.  According to ONC analyses of nationally representative survey data from hospitals and physicians collected in 2019, over 70% of hospitals experienced at least one major challenge with electronic public health reporting and less than 1 in 5 primary care physicians—and about a quarter of pediatric and internal medicine primary care physicians—reported electronically exchanging data with public health agencies.

The post Electronic Public Health Reporting among Hospitals & Physicians in the Year Prior to the Pandemic: Implications for Health Equity & Pandemic Response appeared first on Health IT Buzz.

In ONC’s “App Developer and Data Integrator Perspectives” report [PDF – 511 KB] (Perspectives Report) – the third in the “Accelerating APIs” report series – we assess the current landscape of API-based health information exchange in a rapidly evolving electronic health data ecosystem. Perspectives of app developers and data integrators are presented to understand the emerging landscape of technology companies and their role in effective data aggregation, integration, and exchange.

Federal Efforts Promoting Standardized App Use

Together with the ONC Cures Act Final Rule and CMS Promoting Interoperability Programs,

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The Strengthening the Technical Advancement & Readiness of Public Health via Health Information Exchange Program (The STAR HIE Program) has made great strides in supporting public health agencies’ ability to exchange health information during times of emergency.
Funded through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) in 2020, the initial STAR HIE Program was expanded in 2021 to further support efforts to increase vaccination data sharing between jurisdictional Immunization Information Systems (IIS) and HIEs.

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March is Developmental Disabilities Awareness Month, a time to raise awareness about the inclusion of people with developmental disabilities in all aspects of community life, as well as awareness of the barriers that people with disabilities still sometime face in connecting to the communities in which they live.  ONC works to ensure that health IT improves the health and health care of all Americans, including vulnerable populations such as those with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD).

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