Academy Joins Call for Sensible Data Blocking Enforcement

The Academy joined several other clinical data registry providers in calling for more meaningful efforts to address information blocking. As part of the Physician Clinical Registry Coalition, we urged changes to a proposed rule that implements part of the 21st Century Cures Act.

The act defines information blocking as “a practice that interferes with, prevents, or materially discourages access, exchange, or use of electronic health information.”

Our coalition outlined two key changes in a letter to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) administrator and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). Specifically, we asked for changes to the proposed rule that:

• Do more about electronic health record (EHR) vendors’ and hospitals’ roles in information blocking.
• Revise the one-size-fits-all enforcement approach for clinicians.

Under the proposed rule, clinicians found guilty of information blocking receive zero points in the promoting interoperability performance category for the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS). Because this category is worth 25% of a total MIPS score, a zero score would make achieving a positive payment adjustment impossible. If a clinician reports as part of a group practice, the entire group would get a zero in the promoting interoperability category.

Instead of penalizing the entire group, we think CMS and the ONC should provide a way for the practice to remove the data blocking clinician from the group’s submission and require the offending clinician to report as an individual. Additionally, CMS and ONC should refocus their policies on education rather than arbitrary penalties, giving clinicians a chance to learn from and address mistakes.

We also urged the agencies to do more about the role that EHR vendors and hospitals play in data blocking. As we noted, physicians may sometimes fail to share information because their EHR or hospital systems don’t allow it.

The obstacles EHR vendors created in particular make it more difficult for entities like the Academy’s IRIS^® Registry to achieve their full potential. We urged the agencies to more vigorously apply existing information blocking rules against EHR vendors and work with the coalition to establish standards for health care data exchange.