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Blog from August, 2019

Adding a Blue Button

So there is this Blue Button initiative, which pushes software vendors to add a blue button (https://www.healthit.gov/topic/health-it-initiatives/blue-button) on the software, indicating that the patient or doctor can download the medical record for a patient. It is now being proposed for implementation Medicare patients. This seems particularly promising as it would be the first time the patient could download their data from different Medicare providers and import them all into one single personal health record.

According to RollCall Providers can start enrolling now, apparently, and the CMS will roll out data in August. It sounds like the CMS, administering the Medicare program has control over that data, so it would all come from them.

https://bluebutton.cms.gov


The idea is to Further Reduce Administrative, Regulatory Burden to Lower Healthcare Costs. This is a direct move towards reducing clinician burnout from too much useless data overhead.

CMS is Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. From wikipedia: 

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), previously known as the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA), is a federal agency within the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that administers the Medicare program and works in partnership with state governments to administer Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program(CHIP), and health insurance portability standards. In addition to these programs, CMS has other responsibilities, including the administrative simplification standards from the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), quality standards in long-term carefacilities (more commonly referred to as nursing homes) through its survey and certification process, clinical laboratory quality standards under the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments, and oversight of HealthCare.gov.

Full article here.