Survey: Few health care organizations can meet Cures Act requirements

A new survey commissioned by Verato, found that while more than half of surveyed organizations (61%) have invested effort and resources into meeting the requirements of the Cures Act, only 36% report having the necessary comprehensive data quality programs in place to do so.

The 21st Century Cures Act set standards for the secure and frictionless exchange of data among payers, providers and consumers, including the establishment of an information-blocking rule that was finalized earlier this year. Only 41% of respondents report being able to completely comply with the info-blocking rules set forth in the Cures Act.

When asked about their readiness for specific provisions of the Cures Act, fewer than half of respondents said their organizations are fully compliant in these key areas:

• Sending electronic notifications of patient activity to other healthcare organizations (44%)
• Obtaining patient consent and authorization to share their data with external sources (46%)
• Maintaining technical infrastructure that ensures secure information exchange (43%)
• Sharing patient-level information with patients, other healthcare organizations and systems (43%)
• Receive patient-level information from other healthcare organizations and systems (43%)

“With the new proposed rule outlining disincentives, the pressure is on for hospitals and health systems to invest in the right data infrastructure,” says Clay Ritchey, CEO of Verato. “The information blocking rules in the 21stCentury Cures Act will also significantly raise the amount of data that flows between organizations within the health care industry.”

Other survey key findings include:

• The vast majority (98%) of healthcare executives expect an increase in data requests from other organizations, and 97% predict an increase in data coming into their organization from external sources.
• With this influx of data, 57% believe that patient data-matching errors will result in a healthcare crisis within the next five to 10 years.
• Two thirds of health care organizations are not completely confident in their data management infrastructure’s ability to protect the integrity of patient data.
• Nearly half (49%) report that their data is still stored in fragmented, siloed systems.
• Almost all (97%) see future negative impacts of poor data management as the amount of data coming into their organization increases—including poor patient outcomes, deterioration in care quality and more difficult billing.