Report: Hospitals Seeing Fewer Cases of Information Blocking by Providers

Fewer hospitals reported that health care providers engaged in practices that may constitute information blocking in 2022 than in 2021, according to new research.

The percentage of hospitals that perceived information blocking by providers decreased from 36 percent in 2021 to 12 percent in 2022, according to a new data and accompanying blog post issued on June 14 by the by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC).

Only 20 percent of hospitals said health care providers used artificial barriers to engage in perceived information blocking in 2022, compared to 35 percent in 2021, the analysis found. Meanwhile, 15 percent of hospitals said providers refused to exchange information in 2022, compared with 26 percent in 2022. The analysis was a review of hospital data by two authors of a study on information blocking that ran in the June 2023 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA).

The analysis cited three likely explanations for the drop in perceived information blocking among health care providers:

• Health care providers have responded to information blocking rules by changing their practices to reduce possible blocking.
• Hospital leaders may have become more familiar with the regulatory definition of information blocking and requirements of regulations.
• The initial data from 2021 may have been overestimated.

HHS Release of Rules on Information Blocking

AHIMA Director of Regulatory Affairs Andrew Tomlinson said the yearly release of these statistics by ONC is helpful for the provider community to benchmark their success in information sharing, especially now that they have received their updated certified electronic health record products.

“We are now waiting for the HHS [US Department of Health and Human Services] Office of the Inspector General [OIG] final rule that will outline how the claims submitted to ONC are investigated,” Tomlinson added. “Once the OIG rule and ONC’s future rule on provider disincentives are released, we will get a clearer picture of the current state of information blocking and the nation’s collective success or failure at meeting the information sharing requirements.”

HHS this year plans to release rules to enforce the information blocking provisions of the 21^st Century Cures Act. The provisions, written by the ONC, are already in effect, and they prohibit providers, health information networks, and health IT developers of certified products from interfering with the access, exchange, or use of electronic health information.

AHIMA worked this year with the firm, L&M Policy Research, to conduct a study to examine the current state of information blocking compliance among its membership. The study consisted of interviews with health information (HI) professionals and other compliance team members from 10 hospitals and health systems and one release of information vendor.

Interviewees in the study said HI professionals play a key role in information blocking compliance because they are highly trained in the latest information technology applications and understand the workflow process in healthcare provider organizations. They also voiced concerns about the complexity of the federal rules on information blocking and expressed a desire for additional guidance on implementation.

Damon Adams is content production editor for AHIMA.