Trump Admin Shares Vision for Patient-Centered Health System

The Trump administration, led by Jared Kushner, director of the Office of American Innovation, and Seema Verma, administrator of CMS, spoke about its plans to put data in the hands of patients at the annual Healthcare Information Management and Systems Society (HIMSS) conference, held in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The administration announced its new initiative, MyHealthEData, which aims to break down the barriers preventing patients from accessing and controlling their medical records. “Patients should have access and control to share their data with whoever they want, making the patient the center of the health care system,” Verma says.

Part of MyHealthEData will include the revival of the Medicare Blue Button initiative, which allows patients to download their health data with the simple click. Blue Button 2.0 is a “developer friendly, standards-based [application programming interface],” says Verma. She says it will aim to connect Medicare beneficiary claims data to secure applications, which will give patients control over that information. “Blue Button 2.0 will create an ecosystem where tech innovators are competing to serve Medicare beneficiaries.”

CMS will also work with states to make Medicaid claims data available through this initiative. Verma called on private insurers to give patients access to their claims data too. All told, Verma promised that the administration will pull every lever that creates an ecosystem where app developers are tailoring products to compete for patients, as part of the MyHealthEData initiative. She also said another aspect of the MyHealthEData initiative is to ensure physicians are spending less time in front of computers and more time with patients…

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View all Articles by: Melissa Clark, CCS-P