It would have taken four presidential administrations to ultimately achieve that, but U.S. healthcare professionals blocking access to electronic medical data for patients and providers could ultimately begin to face real consequences.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced this week it plans to take a break from the demolition of US public health systems and take an “active enforcement stance” against healthcare actors (PDFs) that “restrict patient care by blocking access, exchange and use of electronic health information.”
“Patients must have free access to health information, as guaranteed by law,” General Juliet Hodgkins of Juliet Hodgkins said in a press release from the agency. “Providers and certain health IT entities have a legal obligation to ensure that information flows where it is needed and where it is needed.”
The Hodgkins law mentioned is a 21st century cure signed into law by President Obama in 2016. The rules require that patients have easy and electronic access to health information, including without the expense of basic API access, through the app they choose to use.
While it's a great idea in principle, treatments only set civil penalties for exchanges that violate developers, health information networks, and their sharing rules, undefined provider penalties, and ensure that no consequences are achieved if they do not adhere to healthcare data. The provider's obstacles remained for the HHS to determine, and draft proposals did not appear until late 2023.
The provider-oriented obstacle was not completed until July last year. Although Biden's team has little time to develop and launch an enforcement mechanism after its finalization, the current HHS accused former administrator of not prioritizing information blocking penalties while in office.
The truth behind these accusations may be questionable, but there are also some pretty obvious reasons why the Biden administration may not prioritize information blocking. There have been no many reports of that happening in the past few years.
HHS's own data shows that since the online portal went online in April 2021, 1,336 claims have been filed with potential information blocking. This is less than the report as of August 31st, when the data ends.
It does not prevent providers from worrying about how data blocking will affect the future of healthcare in the digital age, but it suggests that it is a somewhat isolated issue and may not be a problem that threatens patient outcomes.
Of course, if people believe there are points to submit them, reports can increase, and those penalties may serve that purpose. According to the HHS, blocking access to data in violation of treatment could lead to healthcare providers responding to unspecified Medicare and Medicaid “disingentive,” and healthcare IT companies could be fined up to $1 million for each violation. In addition to these penalties, healthcare IT companies participating in HHS' Health IT accreditation program may revoke their accreditation and be banned from the program.
HHS did not respond to questions about this story. ®
