Today I am going to discuss a recent proposal by CMS which begins a digital, data revolution
that truly empowers American patients.
The Trump Administration is committed to move towards a healthcare future where patients
are able to obtain and share their health data, securely and privately, with just a
few clicks.
The groundbreaking rules announced recently, ensure Americans have access to their medical
records in a digital format, increase the seamless flow of health information, reduce
burden on patients and providers, and foster innovation by unleashing data for researchers
and innovators.
I want to briefly discuss why we have done this and why this CMS rule is so important
for the future of our healthcare system.
Our nation is in the midst of the greatest healthcare challenge in perhaps our entire
history—if nothing is done to better control healthcare costs by 2026, we’ll be spending
one in every five dollars on health care, a cost crisis that will destroy our economy.
To address this, rather than increase government control of healthcare decisions, this Administration
has chosen to unleash the most powerful force for change in our country: the American people.
To that end, last year myself, along with Jared Kushner and Chris Liddell from the White
House Office of American Innovation, hosted a series of listening sessions in 2017 and
in 2018 we introduced the MyHealthEData Initiative to further our objectives to empower patients,
unleash innovation and focus on results.
Today’s announcement delivers on this commitment, and builds on the work we’ve been doing
in the MyHealthEData initiative over the past year.
As most, if not all of you know, last year we overhauled the Meaningful Use Program to
focus on promoting the seamless transfer of medical records throughout the entire healthcare
system.
For the first time, hospitals trying to avoid penalties and doctors looking for incentive
payments must meet increased standards for privacy and security, use the most recent
certified electronic health records that allows data to be shared electronically with patients,
and ensure that they are communicating seamlessly with other providers about their patients’
care.
And last year, we also launched Blue Button 2.0, which allows nearly 40 million Medicare
beneficiaries to share their claims data in an API format, with applications that help
them manage their health.
There are now over 1,500 developers with access to this data in a controlled development environment
and 18 actually using Blue Button data to build applications.
Because of this patients can now use their claims data to organize medication lists,
share data with their doctors, and help them understand their health better.
Consumers routinely perform many daily tasks on their mobile phones – banking, shopping,
paying bills, scheduling – using secure applications.
And we believe that obtaining their health information should be just as easy, convenient,
and user-friendly.
Today, we are doubling down on our commitment to empower patients by requiring health plans
to follow our lead with releasing claims data.
We have proposed that by 2020, all health plans doing business in Medicare, Medicaid,
and through the federal exchanges be required to share claims and other health information
with patients electronically through an API, and allow those patients to take their information
with them when they change plans.
Making this information available through an API will allow easy integration for use
by more patients, allowing them to be true partners in their health care.
The proposal would enable them to more easily share their information with providers, family,
caregivers, and others.
Combined with the nearly 40 million beneficiaries in traditional Medicare who have access through
Blue Button, this brings the total number of patients with electronic access to their
health claims data to 125 million.
Now we’re also proposing that claims data follow a patient as they move from plan to
plan, allowing a single access point for patients and sharing critical information for plans.
Sharing claims data is just one piece of our path to a healthcare system that seamlessly
shares data.
We are also putting an end to Information Blocking.
The days of holding patients’ data hostage are over.
Our proposed rule includes a policy to publicly identify doctors, hospitals, and other health
care providers who engage in information blocking, or, simply put, we are going to expose the
bad actors who are purposely trying to keep patients from their own information.
Patient data doesn’t belong to the doctor, hospital or electronic health record, it belongs
to the patient.
Increasing quality and driving down cost requires an informed care team.
And using the strongest lever we have, making it a Condition of Participation in Medicare,
we are requiring that all hospitals must send electronic notifications to designated health
care providers when their patients are admitted, discharged, or transferred from the hospital
– to improve transitions of care between medical settings to increase patient safety,
coordination, and improve overall care.
In the rule we also included additional proposals that help encourage the seamless flow of health
data.
These proposals are:
- Requiring health plans to make provider directory data available via an API, including
timely updates to such data, for the majority of health plans covered by CMS programs.
- Furthering care coordination for our 11 million dual eligible beneficiaries by increasing
the frequency of data sharing among federal systems, state systems, and the dual eligible’s
individual healthcare plan.
- To help inform our next phase of policies around interoperability, our proposed rule
also contains two RFIs.
First, we want to know how we can put the weight of CMS behind patient identity and
patient matching.
This is a critical issue that must be solved to promote coordinated care and patient safety
and we need your help.
Second, we want to know how we can improve health IT adoption and data sharing in post-acute
care settings.
We need to make sure that every provider a patient interacts with across the healthcare
system can collect and share data.
Our work to facilitate seamless access to data is not over.
We must continue to support standards development, ensuring that the HIPAA designated record
set is made available electronically.
In this proposal we reference the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resource, or FHIR, standard
and are thrilled to continue to support the industry in maturing the standard that will
facilitate our move towards a healthcare system that effectively shares data and puts the
patient at the center.
Today we have taken another step forward on our commitment to empowering patients, and
the MyHealthEData initiative, and the steps we’ve taken so far should reinforce the
message we have been sending to the healthcare industry since this Administration came into
office: the time of keeping patients in the dark in order to trap them in closed systems
so that they’ll never leave, and never seek lower cost and higher quality options is over.
Today we are proposing a major step, but those in the Healthcare industry don’t have to
limit themselves to our requirements.
I encourage every healthcare provider to continually find new ways to empower their patients through
making it easy to receive and understand their healthcare information, and by increasing
price and quality transparency.
Our work has been done in coordination with the Office of the National Coordinator, and
we appreciate the work of Dr. Rucker to advance this important issue.
Thank you.