Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma is reported to have announced several new initiatives for interoperability. In a post-speech meeting with the news reporters Verma said, “We’re changing to a new era of empowered consumers. We are about putting patients first and making sure patients have access to their healthcare data. You’re hearing that from the White House too. We’re very clear that patients should have their data and access to it in a timely manner because that will increase quality, duplication, testing.”
Kushner, who was also present at the announcement said that the Trump Administration has also developed a plan that would facilitate greater interoperability. Verma stated that the administration is aiming at a healthcare ecosystem where medical data could flow freely.
“I call on all insurers to give patients their claims data electronically,” Verma said.
CMS has also launched MyHealthEData at HIMSS18 event in Las Vegas and the new launch was aimed at delivering healthcare information to the patients faster. The new initiative will also ensure that the patients receive a good copy of their entire medical record electronically. It was announced that this would be done through APIs or program interfaces.
“CMS believes the future of healthcare depends on the development of open APIs. We need more payment data,” she said adding, “Beneficiaries will have complete control to how and when their data is used.”
Verma also said that the CMS was also taking steps to ensure that hospitals are not involved in data blocking. “It’s not acceptable to limit patient records or prevent them from seeing their complete history outside of (that) health system,” she said.
