Upcoming Deregulatory Rule Streamlines Health IT Certification

The Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy (ASTP) is preparing a deregulatory action aimed at streamlining its health IT certification program and enforcement on information-blocking, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy Steven Posnack said at Tuesday’s Health IT Summit.

Posnack said the office is taking a comprehensive look at its certification criteria and outlined that a new notice of proposed rulemaking is on track for release later this year as part of the agency’s spring unified regulatory agenda.

“We’re really taking a full evaluation of all of our certification criteria in the program itself,” Posnack said. “There are things in there that made a lot of sense 10 years ago, but don’t have as much juice left to squeeze today from a regulatory perspective. That’s one thing you can definitely expect us to take on.”

Posnack referred to the need to reassess the layers of various requirements from the past 15 years to keep pace with evolving priorities. These include areas such as data standards and interoperability rules.

“We say hey, CDC, CMS, HRSA, you all are all collecting the same data for different mission purposes,” said Posnack. “Wouldn’t it be great if the stakeholders that you interact with only have to collect it once?”

He added the forthcoming rule could ease compliance burdens for health IT stakeholders and shift focus toward emerging challenges like bi-directional data exchange, automation in clinical workflows and endeavors such as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ digital technology ecosystem.

“The thing that is super exciting to me is how we might be able to do a lot of automation to help especially on the clinical side,” Posnack said, “and leave the computerized stuff to the things that computers are good at.”

Of agency leadership’s recent directive to prioritize enforcement of information blocking, Posnack emphasized that having “more bi-directional data exchange and capabilities is something that we’re definitely looking at from a policy perspective.”

ASTP is also focused on expanding nationwide interoperability through the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA). TEFCA, which officially went live at the end of 2023, now connects nearly 10,000 organizations. Posnack is pushing for that to grow.

He noted TEFCA’s use case with the Social Security Administration in reducing disability claims processing and thus saving money.

“Our colleagues at SSA have been really forward leaning in their network participation,” Posnack said. “They’re one of our first customers from a government partner perspective.”

Posnack cautioned that regulation reform takes time. “Those are not quick fixes,” he said, stressing that ASTP aims to work closely with the private sector to drive progress.

“We’re going to look to see how we can help the private sector move faster,” he said. “We’d rather work in better partnership with the private sector to see what we can accelerate at a much faster pace.”