Updated June 4, 9:30 a.m.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services plans to undertake several new health tech initiatives, senior leaders announced today at a closed meeting with stakeholders.
The Department of Health and Human Services held a meeting today to discuss health tech policy and its recent request for information on health tech initiatives. CMS seems to be moving ahead with some of the initiatives it asked stakeholders to provide feedback on in its RFI — among them a national provider directory and modern identity verification for Medicare beneficiaries.
This comes as the HHS' health IT office announced a new leader this morning, Thomas Keane, M.D. Keane spoke at the meeting of stakeholders today at the Hubert H. Humphrey building in Washington, D.C.
HHS leaders outlined several upcoming tech initiatives to benefit providers and patients, according to individuals who attended the meeting and spoke to Fierce Healthcare:
- CMS plans to build a national healthcare directory, starting with provider information. The goal of the national provider directory, a source that attended the meeting wrote, is to establish a single source of truth for provider information that others can build upon.
Its current pilot in Oklahoma will continue and will be a model for a national directory.
- CMS plans to implement a federated, modern identity verification solution to Medicare, with leaders pointing to Login.gov or CLEAR as examples. Individuals will verify their identity once and use it across multiple systems including providers and payers.
- CMS plans to create a type of digital insurance card for Medicare beneficiaries allowing for real-time access to coverage information for patients and providers. It will also expand patient access APIs through Blue Button and make APIs more usable and scalable.
- CMS will also take its Data at the Point of Care from a pilot into general availability. The program enables providers to access Medicare claims data for their patients directly within their workflow.
- CMS will fully participate in the trusted data exchange to better respond to patient and provider requests and create a more interoperable and patient-centric system.
CMS confirmed the new initiatives in a series of posts on X on Tuesday evening, though it did not provide any additional details on the new projects.
Industry representatives that attended the all-day sessions with CMS and ASTP/ONC were encouraged by the discussions and believe the Trump administration will work with industry to change long standing issues with patient data exchange.
"From what I observed and heard, this administration is committed to digital health transformation – with artificial intelligence at its core," William Charnetski, executive vice president for health system solutions and government affairs at PointClickCare, said in a statement to Fierce Healthcare. "Among the most compelling themes is the recognition that collaboration with the private sector, open communication, and interoperable data exchange must be treated as foundational, not optional."
Ryan Howells, principal at Leavitt Partners and executive director of the CARIN Alliance, echoed Charnetski's takeaways from the event.
"This is a once in a generation opportunity for the public and private sectors to come together to initiate meaningful policies and projects to ensure over the next decade we can modernize our data exchange ecosystem using modern internet technology standards such as APIs, digital identity solutions, applications, AI, and cloud-based systems," Howells said. "The excitement at the meeting today was palpable from all who participated and there was more energy around these topics than I’ve seen in the last decade."
Leigh Burchell, vice president of government affairs at Altera Digital Health, said that the industry needs new incentives for data sharing.
"One topic that came up repeatedly throughout the day, both on panels and in breakout sessions, was the misalignment of incentives that has undermined efforts related to health interoperability to date, but the good news is that CMS controls those levers and can take a fresh look at both carrots and sticks to incite providers to more thoroughly embrace data exchange,” Burchell said.
CMS did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.