New Products: Interoperability Issue Brief Series

About this Issue Brief Series: As the American healthcare system shifts to reward value rather than volume, improving quality and lowering costs are high priorities among healthcare stakeholders. Increased access to data across settings has the potential to greatly improve the quality of health care delivery and care coordination. However, using and exchanging health information across the care continuum to support these priorities requires interoperable data sharing systems.
 
On February 11, 2019, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) released proposed rules to “support seamless and secure access, exchange, and use of electronic health information.” Both rules have similar themes and share the same goal of interoperability but apply to different programs. CMS, which has authority over the Medicare and Medicaid programs, focuses on creating standards that Medicare and Medicaid providers must follow that will support interoperability. ONC, which promotes the adoption and use of health information technology, focuses more broadly on the use and exchange of health information across the healthcare system.
 
To help raise awareness and understanding of the rules, Health Information and the Law has identified key topics related to the proposed rules and how they affect interoperability. The following is the first in a series of Issue Briefs that focuses on Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and how both CMS and ONC are addressing the use of this technology.