Interoperability and Health Information Exchange

Federal interoperability policy tracked from proposal to compliance date: certification criteria, USCDI, TEFCA, FHIR APIs and information blocking.

Interoperability policy is made in three places that rarely move together: the ONC Health IT Certification Program, which binds developers; the CMS payer and provider rules, which bind the organizations that buy the software; and the standards process underneath both, where USCDI, FHIR and TEFCA decide what the data actually looks like.

A physician practice usually encounters the result years later, as a vendor upgrade with a deadline attached. The gap between a certification criterion being finalized and a practice feeling it is where most of the cost lands, and it is the gap this coverage is built around.

What this covers

Certification criteria and Conditions of Certification, including the HTI rule series. USCDI version releases and the annual submission cycle. TEFCA, QHIN designation, and the exchange purposes that govern it. Information blocking, its exceptions, and enforcement. FHIR API requirements in both ONC certification and CMS rules. The Standards Version Advancement Process, which changes what certified software must support without a new rule.

Why it is hard to track

Most of the binding detail is not in the rule text. It is in implementation guides, certification companion guides, SVAP announcements, and paperwork notices that never generate a headline. A compliance date can also move without a rule: an enforcement discretion statement or a revised implementation guide changes what is required while the regulation stays as written.

In this area

37 briefs, newest first. Tag archives: Interoperability · Health IT Certification · Health IT Policy

Dates that bind

Open comment windows and effective dates are on the regulatory tracker, which regenerates every weekday. Compliance dates are on the compliance page. Verify any date you intend to rely on against the primary document linked in the brief; see disclosures for how these briefs are produced.