With the ONC Interoperability Rule deadline coming up quickly, there is much to be done from a compliance perspective for the health IT communities. More importantly, HIEs are emerging as the vital link to help with the final delivery of the rule.

During the recent ONC Tech Forum, Dr. Donald Rucker, National Coordinator for Health IT, echoed this sentiment, especially when it comes to how HIEs enhance long-term data storage and aggregation that can boost the quality of care overall.

“Most of the country’s now covered with HIEs, and they really are a good way to have a central store of some of the federated data and the messages from various providers as needed as they’re taking care of patients, and in that world, that can provide really one-stop-shopping on reporting,” said Rucker, in this recent Government CIO article.

The ONC Final Rule is pushing the healthcare industry to adopt the usage of standard APIs to give providers and patients direct access to health information. It also aims to prevent information blocking, build upon TEFCA, and uphold FHIR.

In terms of information blocking, we recently hosted a RosettaHealth podcast interview with Mariann Yeager, CEO of The Sequoia Project, about her organization’s new Information Blocking Compliance Boot Camp, as well as its free public resource center to help prepare health IT organizations for the November 2nd deadline.

In addition, the spotlight was further focused on HIEs last week with the announcement that HHS is offering $2.5 million in funding for HIEs – with the aim to support state and local public health agencies.

This program aims to strengthen existing state and local HIE infrastructure so that public health agencies are able to better access, share, and use health information as well as support communities that have been disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The funding opportunity we announced today will invest in infrastructure and data services for HIEs that provide critical real-time information to communities at the frontlines of responding to the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Rucker in this statement.

RosettaHealth has a long history of helping HIEs to best advance their missions through improved connectivity and efficiency in health data exchange.

To learn more about how RosettaHealth can assist with any health information challenges you might have, book a free consultation with one of our interoperability experts.