Preparing for the return of elective surgeries and devising a strategy to realize higher revenues, lower readmissions, and greater patient throughput, in the post-COVID-19 era the patient journey will change drastically. Healthcare providers are thus looking for ways to improve patient satisfaction and outcomes without adding to the heavy burden felt by their care teams by adding time-consuming processes to the daily to-do list.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) each issued rules to empower patients and improve data exchange arrangements under the 21st Century Cures Act on March 9, 2020. The new rules support increased interoperability and facilitate patient access to electronic health information. The amendment will also strengthen the MyHealthEData initiative, allowing patients to manage and make their own healthcare decisions.

The Accountable Communities for Health (ACH) are an integral initiative of nationwide health care innovation. The intent of each ACH is to improve the health of the entire community by linking community prevention activities and health care, with particular attention to achieving greater health equity among its residents. The multifaceted approach followed by any ACH generates a lot of data that will now have to be interoperable and transparent, but secure. This whitepaper will focus on the implication of ONC and CMS rules, best practices, and the movement toward interoperability in community health. We conclude with an overarching strategy that would allow easier data sharing to facilitate community health