The Cures Act strongly supports access to EHR data using third-party solutions

• The Cures Act calls for data exchange standards that permit access to certain components of electronic health information (EHI) “without special effort.” (sections 4002, 4003).
• The Act defines information blocking as “A practice that, except as required by law or covered by an exception, is likely to interfere with, prevent, or materially discourages access, exchange to use of EHI.” (section 4004).
• Entities that engage in information blocking face penalties of up to $1,000,000 per violation.

In the Final Rule and related commentary, the ONC made clear its purpose to:

• “Re-inject competition into health care by lowering barriers to entry and preventing abuses of market power and improve access to the quality of information that Americans need to make informed health care decisions.”
• Support: “[H]ealth care providers’ independence to choose the “provider-facing” third-party services they want to use to interact with the [EHRs] they have acquired.”
• Support activities that focus on: “[I]mproving patient and health care provider access to [electronic health information] and promoting competition.”