Electronic Health & Medical Records

Portrait of Micky Tripathi

Getting Real about Information Blocking and APIs

Micky Tripathi | October 8, 2024

Our country has made tremendous strides and invested billions of private and public dollars in establishing the digital future of the health care system. We are thus highly concerned about ongoing and recent reports that we have received about potential violations of both the letter and spirit of the various laws and regulations now in place to ensure information-sharing to improve our health care system and enhance the lives of all Americans. In this blog post we describe some of the issues that have been brought to our attention and the steps that we are taking to address them.

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Portrait of Jordan Everson

Raising the Bar on Interoperability – A Decade of Data Show that “Sometimes” Isn’t Good Enough

Jordan Everson | June 17, 2024

A decade ago, as EHRs were rapidly implemented across the country, ONC sought to make sure these newly implemented technologies were interoperable. Since 2014, ONC has tracked progress toward widespread interoperability among hospitals and physicians by measuring their engagement in four domains of health information exchange: electronically finding, sending, receiving, and integrating patient health information. As shown in the figure below, US hospitals experienced widespread progress toward interoperability with 70% of hospitals reporting that they ‘sometimes’ or ‘often’ engaged in all four domains in 2023,

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Portrait of Wei Chang

Hospitals Collect and Receive Social Needs Data, but Usage Varies

Wei Chang | July 31, 2023

If left unaddressed, the social needs experienced by an individual may lead to poor health outcomes and more time spent in hospitals and interacting with the health care system. Hospitals, therefore, are uniquely situated to help address social needs and mitigate social risk factors by screening for social needs, assisting with transitions of care, and making connections to social service organizations. According to a recent ONC analysis of data from the 2022 American Hospital Association (AHA) Information Technology Supplement Survey,

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Portrait of Jordan Everson

Updated Insights on Hospital Leaders’ Perceptions of Information Blocking

Jordan Everson | June 14, 2023

In a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA), we leveraged data from the 2020 American Hospital Association (AHA) Information Technology Supplement gathered from April-June 2021, shortly after the initial applicability date of the information blocking regulations (April 5, 2021). We found that 42% of hospitals perceived that at least one type of information blocking “actor” (health care provider, health information network/health information exchange, or health IT developer of certified health IT) engaged in practices that may constitute information blocking.

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Portrait of Kathryn Marchesini

Increasing the Transparency and Trustworthiness of AI in Health Care

Kathryn Marchesini | April 13, 2023

This is part five of a blog series on predictive models, artificial intelligence (AI) & machine learning (ML) in health. We encourage readers to (re)visit the four previous blog posts for important context to what follows.
Through a series of blog posts over the last year, we’ve described our understanding of the current and potential uses of predictive models and machine learning algorithms in health care, and the role that ONC can play in shaping their development and use.

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