WASHINGTON D.C., DC — U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner wrote to the Department of Health and Human Services on Friday about a proposed rule by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) that would require CMS-funded health plans to allow patients to access their personal health information electronically through third-party consumer applications.
In his letter, Sen. Warner urged the Department of Health and Human Services to include clear standards and defined controls for accessing patient data to address the potential for misuse of these interoperability features.
Warner said under the proposed Interoperability and Patient Access rule, CMS would require Medicare Advantage (MA) organizations, state Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) Fee-for-Service (FFS) programs, Medicaid managed care plans, CHIP managed care entities, and qualified health plans (QHPs) on the federally-facilitated exchanges (FFEs) to allow patients to access their personal health information electronically through open application programming interfaces (APIs). APIs would allow third-party software applications to connect to, process, and make the data available to patients.
View Warner's letter below:
