And now ... on with the show.
We are lowercase-e excited that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services – via the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services – has released the "final" rules related to the interoperability and information-blocking provisions of the 21st Century Cures Act.
The so-called CMS Final Rule is designed ultimately to help patients have more control over their healthcare data.
Monday's announcement was expected and the rules themselves have been in the public domain for some time. So, the only real "news" – and it came as a relief – was that there weren't unexpected, 11th-hour changes … and especially any that showed acquiescence to the goliath EHR companies that had been pushing for self-serving changes.
And so now, the real work begins. The onus is now on those of us in the healthcare IT space to have the technology in place to implement those rules and meet the mandate deadlines over the next several years.
It's not merely a guess to suggest that expertise in standards; informatics architecture; terminology; and clinical decision support will be in demand as vendors and healthcare providers move toward making the promise of the Cures Act a reality.
Team BZ has a stable of agile subject-matter experts with more than 100 cumulative years of real-world experience helping bridge technology and better patient outcomes. What can we do to help your organization optimize its systems so that they are best able to serve the people who work, and should benefit, from them … now and going forward?