With the COVID-19 pandemic upending virtually every part of the healthcare ecosystem these days, the ONC and HHS have extended the deadline for hospitals and health IT professionals to implement the final phase of the 21st Century Cures Act.

A key part of the interoperability rule is that hospitals need to ensure that they are electronically sharing patient event notifications with patients’ primary providers within six months – from when it was announced on March 9th.

As such, CMS is now extending the implementation timeline for the admission, discharge, and transfer (ADT) notification Conditions of Participation (CoPs) by an additional six months.

According to this Healthcare Innovation article, CMS noted that it received more than 600 public comments on the section specific to patient event notification requirements – and overall the comments were positive.

When the interoperability rule was first published in early March, the National Association of ACOs stated that the new Medicare requirement on hospitalization alerts “a win for better population health management.” 

In addition, we published a comprehensive blog post about the industry’s feedback on the overall HHS interoperability rules in early March. Much like the National Association of ACOs, the feedback was also very positive.

Although there is a six-month extension on complying with the patient event notifications rule, there is much work that hospitals will need to do to be compliant. The right SaaS-based big health data interoperability platforms can help hospitals and health systems to get started on the right foot.

To learn more about how to get your hospital prepared to meet the CMS event notification requirements, please contact us.