The Health and Human Services Department finalized two highly anticipated, lengthy rules this week that’ll enable Americans to download and access their personal health records and claims data on their smartphones.
On a call with reporters Monday, agency and administration officials detailed the new regulations, which force health care providers and insurers to offer patients their critical health information in a shareable, standardized electronic format. The hope, officials said, is to help patients make more informed health care decisions by boosting the information they have at hand—and eventually spur the development of an entire ecosystem of related smartphone apps that’ll help them monitor their health in real time from information in their health records.
“These rules are the start of a new chapter in how patients experience American health care,” HHS Secretary Alex Azar said. “Patients should have control of their records, period. Now that’s becoming a reality.”
The rules have been years in the making, though the problems they aim to solve have persisted for much longer. Three years ago the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and other White House officials began hosting a series of listening sessions with health care experts, clinicians, entrepreneurs, researchers and patients regarding the top health care priorities and challenges they’re facing on the contemporary care landscape. According to Matt Lira, special assistant to the president for innovation policy and initiatives, officials in the talks “consistently heard about the need for better patient access and control over their own health care records.” These insights led to an “all-hands-on-deck effort” to tackle the issues raised, and last year, HHS subsequently launched the draft rules for public comment.
In response to the draft rules, Az ..
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