On March 19 CMS and ONC released the final rules for interoperability under the 21st Century Cures Act. The rules mandate payers and providers begin sharing data via application programming interfaces (APIs) as early as July 1, 2021.
The final rules provide more clarity. Healthcare organizations must assess their readiness level now and begin activating core capabilities needed to share data via APIs. Organizations should also consider the opportunities provided under the mandate to explore and prioritize ideas to improve services and value to insurance plan members, patients, and partner agencies.
Technology departments should take stock of how ready they are for designing, building, publishing, managing, and monitoring services like APIs that: 1. expose patient and clinical information, and 2. receive patient and clinical information from other organizations to integrate with existing data.