Building on momentum from Administrator Seema Verma’s announcement of the MyHealtheData initiative at HIMSS 2018, CMS has published more clues as to future action to liberate health information for patients.
In the CY 2019 call letter to Medicare Advantage organizations and Part D programs, CMS describes the Blue Button 2.0 project and its use of the interoperable application programming interface (API) standard Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR). CMS encourages Medicare Advantage plans to adopt “data release platforms” that either meet or exceed the capabilities of Blue Button 2.0, and makes it clear that the agency intends to pursue rulemaking requiring such adoption for 2020.
The FHIR standard is also discussed, although not required, in the 2015 Edition Health IT Certification Criteria for API access, regulations promulgated by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) that set the rules for functionality and interoperability of electronic health record systems. It seems likely that ONC further promote FHIR for API-based patient access in their upcoming rulemaking updating the certification program, expected this summer.
This move from CMS arrives alongside increased Congressional interest in patient access to information about the cost of healthcare services. This includes a recent Senate price transparency initiative led by Senator Bill Cassidy. Almost 1000 pages of feedback have already been received by Senate staffers, describing why and how payers and providers can make healthcare price and cost information more accessible for individual patients.
Health plans that wish to get ahead of the future regulatory action can check out the developer resources for Blue Button 2.0 to see how CMS envisions API access working for payer data. Plans can also participate in an ongoing ONC Tech Lab project to learn more about on how these standard resources can be used for health plan-specific information and influence standards development.