By Leigh Burchell (Altera Digital Health), Vice Chair, EHRA Information Blocking Compliance Task Force

The EHR Association is committed to preventing information blocking and supporting efforts to share electronic health information to better patient care. As such, our Information Blocking Compliance Task Force collaborated over the past two years with stakeholders across the industry to address regulatory questions and further information exchange.

Our collaboration has produced “Good Information Sharing Practices,” a collection of best practices for health IT developers. The Practices are a practical list of proactive actions health IT developers can undertake to demonstrate their strong support for access, use, and exchange of health information and compliance with information blocking regulations. These include detailed recommendations on:

• Designing systems that make the right data available to appropriate stakeholders.
• Assisting users with interoperability features.
• Supporting and investing in health IT standards.
• Publishing specifications/guidance for integration/interoperability with the systems they develop.
• Supporting clients in participation in health information exchange frameworks and networks.
• Establishing an information-sharing policy.

The Practices represent the expertise of the Information Blocking Compliance Task Force as health IT developers, as well as insights from other informed stakeholders. Our goal with these is two-fold:

1. For health IT developers to reference these Practices to inspire further work to promote interoperability and to demonstrate their commitment to information sharing.
2. Identify a set of practices that, within the boundaries of an enforcement program that remains somewhat ambiguous, support a good faith demonstration of intent to comply with information blocking regulations.

We hope you will find these Practices helpful. We welcome any feedback that helps us refine the list in the future. 

Download “Good Information Sharing Practices” here.