The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has released new guidance on the information blocking portion of MIPS (the Merit-based Incentive Payment System).
In its release of the MACRA (Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015) final rule last year, CMS reiterated its position on information blocking, saying participating providers and hospitals are required to demonstrate cooperation with provisions concerning blocking the sharing of information and separately, to demonstrate engagement with activities that support providers with the performance of their certified EHR (electronic health record) technology such as cooperation with ONC (the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT) direct review of certified health information technologies.
As outlined by CMS in new guidance released this month, “MIPS-eligible clinicians show that they are meeting this [information blocking] requirement by attesting to three statements about how they implement and use certified EHR technology (CEHRT). Together, these three statements are referred to as the ‘Prevention of Information Blocking Attestation.’” The three statements to which providers are attesting to are:
- A MIPS-eligible clinician must attest that they did not knowingly and willfully take action (such as to disable functionality) to limit or restrict the compatibility or interoperability of CEHRT.
- A MIPS-eligible clinician must attest that they implemented technologies, standards, policies, practices, and agreements reasonably calculated to ensure, to the greatest extent practicable and permitted by law, that the CEHRT was, at all relevant times.
---Regarding this statement, the guidance clarified that providers are not expected to have technical skills, but rather they should inform health IT developers, implementers, and others who are responsible for implementing and configuring your CEHRT of the requirements.
- A MIPS-eligible clinician must attest that they responded in good faith and in a timely manner to requests to retrieve or exchange electronic health information, including from patients, healthcare providers, and other persons, regardless of the requestor’s affiliation or technology vendor.
---Notably, the guidance stated here, “You can still attest to statement 3 if, in good faith, you restricted access to information for reasonable purposes, like to make security upgrades or keep patients safe. You also will not be responsible for restricting exchange or interoperability that you could not have reasonably controlled.”
Interestingly the guidance said that providers do not need to show CMS documentation to prove they have acted in good faith to use their CEHRT to support the appropriate exchange of electronic health information, or not block information.
The guidance further said that all MIPS-eligible clinicians who report on the advancing care information performance category (the new meaningful use under MACRA) must attest to the prevention of information blocking attestation. If reporting in a group, if one clinician in the group fails to meet the requirements of the “Prevention of Information Blocking Attestation,” then the whole group would fail to meet the requirement.
The guidance continued, for providers to earn a score for the ACI performance category, they “have to act in good faith when they implement and use their CEHRT to exchange electronic health information. This includes working with technology developers and others who build CEHRT to make sure the technology is used correctly and is connected (and enabled) to meet applicable standards and laws.”
Eligible providers must also ensure that their organizational policies and workflows are enabled and do not restrict the CEHRT’s functionality in any way. For example, if the provider’s CEHRT gives patients access to their electronic health information or exchanges information with other MIPS eligible clinicians, they practice must use these capabilities.
A key point that stakeholders have brought up is that information blocking can be outside of providers’ control since some of the onus falls on their vendors. But as the guidance stated, “We recognize that circumstances beyond a MIPS eligible clinician’s control may limit the exchange or use of electronic health information. This is why the “Prevention of Information Blocking Attestation” focuses on whether you act in good faith to exchange electronic health information and your particular situation.” This focus takes into account a MIPS-eligible clinician’s individual circumstances, such as: practice or organization size; how much technology it has; and what its CEHRT can do.
