This is an excerpt from the full article at the Journal of AHIMA.
By Kelly McLendon, RHIA, CHPS, Rita Bowen, MA, RHIA, CHPS, Peg Schmidt, RHIA, CHPS, and Chrisann Lemery, RHIA, CHPS, FAHIMA
Summary
Beginning this month, OIG will enforce civil monetary penalties for healthcare actors who commit information blocking infractions. Find out if your organization may be at risk.
The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) has released its final rule implementing the information blocking investigation process for all actors (parties subject to The Cures Act) and information blocking penalties for health information networks (HINs), health information exchanges (HIEs), and health IT developers. Enforcement of these penalties began September 1, with large civil monetary penalties (CMP), possibly in the multiples of millions of dollars.
While this final rule was not unexpected, now that it’s here, a new, and serious element of risk has been introduced for the many of those subject to The Cures Act. Risk can be mitigated through careful implementation and continued learning about newly evolved practices which are being defined mostly in the marketplace to manage compliance with the significant and complex liabilities this rule introduces.
Unfortunately, outside of the rule itself, there is not much official guidance from the regulators at this point. If history is a guide, we may not get much more until patterns and actions by regulators emerge.
This is an excerpt from the full article at the Journal of AHIMA. Use this link for the full article.
