MYHEALTHEDATA

According to CMS, the MyHealthEData initiative, “aims to empower patients by ensuring that they control their healthcare data and can decide how their data is going to be used, all while keeping that information safe and secure…MyHealthEData will help to break down the barriers that prevent patients from having electronic access and true control of their own health records from the device or application of their choice.”

Among key aspects of the program are:

Giving Medicare Beneficiaries Their Data Through Medicare’s Blue Button 2.0

Medicare’s Blue Button 2.0 is intended to provide beneficiaries with their claims data in a universal and secure digital format. Medicare first launched Blue Button in 2010 to give patients access to their claims data in a downloadable PDF file. Now, with Blue Button 2.0, beneficiaries will be able to take their data and use it on applications designed to help them manage their health, or share it with their doctors to improve clinical decision-making. Medicare’s Blue Button 2.0 contains four years of Medicare Part A, B, and D data for 53 million Medicare beneficiaries and provides multiple types of information including prescriptions and primary care treatments.

Calling on Private Plans to Provide Patients Their Data

CMS will re-examine its expectations for Medicare Advantage plans and qualified health plans (QHPs) offered through the federally facilitated exchanges, and is calling on all health insurers to release their data.

Encouraging Patient Access Through CMS Programs 

CMS is streamlining the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs for eligible hospitals and critical access hospitals (commonly referred to as the Meaningful Use programs)and the Quality Payment Program (QPP) for clinicians (part of MACRA) to increase the programs’ focus on interoperability and to reduce the time and cost required to comply with them. (Read more in the main article.)

Prioritizing Quality Measures That Lead to Interoperability Preventing Information Blocking

CMS is also taking steps against information blocking (a practice in which providers prevent patients from getting their data), as required by law by requiring hospitals and clinicians under some CMS programs to show they have not engaged in data blocking activities.

Provider Requirements

CMS also says as part of MyHealthEData that it is modernizing provider requirements with a “focus on value-based care”:

CMS has finalized for some its programs the requirement for health care providers to use 2015 Edition certified EHR technology (CEHRT) beginning in 2019, which is capable of giving data to patients in a usable and secure electronic format. Additionally, CMS says it intends to specify what types of information—ideally in electronic format—must be shared by hospitals with a patient’s receiving facility or post-acute care provider. The agency also says that it will further assess the impact of not sharing data on duplicate testing and associated costs.

Of note, CMS states that it is seeking to streamline documentation and billing requirements:

“To make sure that clinicians will spend less time inputting codes and information into EHR systems, and more time with their patients, CMS is considering stakeholder feedback and looking into streamlining its policies around documentation guidelines for Evaluation & Management E&M codes (the codes that doctors use to bill Medicare for patient visits) to modernize documentation requirements and reduce clinician burden.”