CarePort Health, which develops software for transitions of care, has announced a new tool, CarePort Connect for Interoperability, that it says is designed to help hospitals comply with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' new interoperability final rules.

WHY IT MATTERS

CMS' modified conditions of participation require Medicare and Medicaid participating hospitals to send electronic notifications to other healthcare facilities or community providers when a patient is admitted, discharged or transferred. As an intermediary, the Allscripts subsidiary CarePort can send these notifications on a hospital's behalf. 

The CarePort platform hosts 40% of hospital discharges to U.S. post-acute providers, connecting thousands of hospitals with 180,000 post-acute providers in 43 states and processing 10 million patient events a day. Its customizable patient-event notifications include clinical information to contextualize patient history and help manage the referral process. 

THE LARGER TREND

In March, both CMS and ONC published their respective interoperability final rules, with many of CMS' provisions focused on incorporating the electronic notification requirements, with the aim of allowing post-acute providers to efficiently reach out to patients for follow-up services. 

Hospitals must have established electronic notification policies and procedures by the spring of 2021. And while there will be a modest grace period for some of the enforcement timelines, experts say healthcare organizations should start their compliance planning now.

In a recent HIMSS20 Digital presentation, National Coordinator for Health IT Dr. Donald Rucker told HIMSS CEO Hal Wolf that ONC's set of companion rules, which set regulations around information blocking and require API-enabled patient access, will give rise to an "entire ecosystem" of technology – and he discussed how the ongoing coronavirus crisis has highlighted the value of freer-flowing patient data.    

ON THE RECORD

"It is time for cross-continuum care coordination to be made a priority, and CarePort's extensive network is uniquely positioned to foster increased communication and transparency between hospitals, physicians and post-acute providers," said CarePort CEO and founder Dr. Lissy Hu in a statement.

"Despite extended timelines resulting from COVID-19, this pandemic has made evident – more than ever before – the critical importance of interoperability and contextual, actionable alerts to better inform patient care," she said.

Kat Jercich is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Twitter: @kjercich
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.