Best Practices to Fulfill the ONC Interoperability Rule

In March, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) released the interoperability rule as a part of the 21st Century Cures Act, primarily focusing on data exchange and patient information blocking.

Proposed in February 2019, the rule also supports patients accessing and sharing their electronic health information, which helps patients coordinate their healthcare.

The rule also prohibits information blocking and aims to hold health IT developers, such as EHR vendors, accountable as a condition of certification.

The interoperability rule focuses on making patient data more interoperable for patients, providers, payers, and virtually the whole healthcare ecosystem.

The ONC rule will require information to be more standardized, imposing terminology standards on the information’s meaning.

The rule also requires APIs to open up access to that information. It then clarifies to every provider organization that it must share this access, thus relieving HIE organizations' burden.