HIMSS 2019: How Proposed Federal Rules Aim to Boost Patient Data Access | HealthTech Magazine

At the opening keynote, current and former government officials discussed new regulations that could help to better empower consumers. More and more, healthcare providers are leveraging technology to better meet patients on their terms, and patients are taking notice. In a survey published last summer by Black Book Market Research, for instance, more than 90 percent of responding patients said that they did not feel obligated to return to provider organizations that don’t provide a satisfactory digital experience.

That includes access to data, which a panel of experts — including former National Coordinator for Health IT Dr. Karen DeSalvo and former U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra — discussed during Tuesday’s opening keynote session at HIMSS19 in Orlando, Fla. Also featuring Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma, former Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt and HIMSS President and CEO Hal Wolf III, the conversation was driven largely by a long-awaited proposed rule published by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT on Monday focused on patient access to information and information blocking. In the rule, ONC proposes adopting the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resource (FHIR) standards as “the standard to which developers must certify their APIs” as part of an effort to “support an ecosystem for the secure flow of information.”