How The Lessons of 2020 Drive Interoperability in 2021
From a Health IT standpoint, 2020 was off to a roaring start with hospitals already underway meeting Promoting Interoperability requirements. Hospital IT leadership was also anticipating the CMS Interoperability and Patient Access Final Rule, which had been in the works for well over a year and was set to be finalized in March. Then COVID arrived in force, immediately shifting priorities for hospitals nationwide.
In addition to the pandemic’s significant impacts on clinical staffing, PPE supply chains, bed capacity, and new safety protocols, hospitals immediately slowed a range of IT projects. COVID sent IT staff to work from home as they rushed to meet early operational priorities enabling both telehealth visits through new software and hardware procurement and telework capabilities for non-clinical staff.
Although it initially seemed that the impact on regulations would be temporary, it became clear by summer that hospitals would need significant amounts of time to adjust to COVID and recover utilization and revenue. In response, the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) extended compliance dates in October for Information Blocking and Health IT Certification (Promoting Interoperability) requirements. It will soon be time to get these important and needed regulations back on track.
Despite significant hardship, 2020 did hold the industry accountable for adapting to new patient care models. For hospitals and providers, COVID radically accelerated virtual care adoption, which grew (at least temporarily) by hundreds of percent. For years, provider adoption had been painfully slow, so COVID turned out to be a catalyst in driving this critical innovation more quickly. Although we look at the burst of virtual care adoption in 2020 as a huge shift, I am confident that the next few years will mark even larger and more diverse adoption. Healthcare has been starved for the kinds of real productivity and patient enablement changes brought to nearly every other industry by digital communications. Hopefully, the COVID jump-start will be a harbinger of changes that rapidly bring healthcare into the 21st Century, not just for virtual care but for capabilities tied to the internet, mobile, social, and cloud revolutions.
Another need that materialized across the industry was to facilitate Public Health agencies and related entities, including the secure sharing of patient data between Public Health and clinical providers. Most of these teams leverage fax and phone calls, including for same-team communication, as well as to and from a patient’s physician. Unfortunately, COVID did not speed the use of tools to connect public health with the patient’s PCP or hospital care team.
Still, some hospitals did accelerate their deployment of eNotifications and digital medical record sharing with independent and outside practitioners. This met immediate needs to share COVID test results and summaries of ED and inpatient care and got them “ahead of the game” on the CMS Final Rule for eNotification of PCPs, now coming in May 2021.
With the arrival of effective COVID vaccines and the continued improvement in treatment protocols for critically ill COVID patients, we will soon be on our way to resuming the vital work of creating a more connected and interoperable healthcare system. For the benefit of all patients, I hope that 2021 drives the acceleration of these long-needed changes in our Health IT landscape.
Wishing you the best for the New Year and feel free to Contact Us anytime with questions or feedback.
Peter