COVID-19 (Coronavirus) and the 21st Century Cures Act with Tom Leary, VP of Government Relations at HIMSS

One of the interviews I was most looking forward to at the now cancelled HIMSS 2020 annual conference was with Tom Leary, VP of Government Relations at HIMSS. I’ve found that the government relations people at organizations like HIMSS are some of the most well informed people and are fonts of knowledge on what we can expect coming out of Washington. Considering how regulated healthcare is, they always provide great information to tell us about the future. Plus, I was quite confident that the 21st Century Cures Act (Better know as Information Blocking and Health Data Sharing/Interoperability) final rule was going to be released at HIMSS and would be a great point of discussion.

Hard to believe all that’s happened in the past few weeks, but the Information Blocking and Interoperability final rule was released by HHS. Plus, Coronavirus is bringing all sorts of new legislation, exemptions, and funding coming out of Washington as was illustrated yesterday with the Telemedicine Medicare Coronavirus Reimbursement and the HIPAA Exception for Telemedicine.

With all that’s going on, we still wanted to get insight from Tom Leary virtually. Thankfully, he was still able to make some time for us and share his insights and perspectives in the video interview below.

We start by asking Tom to share what’s coming out of Washington related to the Coronavirus. Plus, Tom shares insights into the 21st Century Cures Act final rule including things that surprised him in the final rule. We also discuss what impact the rule is going to have on healthcare organizations and which parts are going to be the hardest to implement. I also ask Tom to share what health IT professionals should be watching for on the horizon as far as future rule making and any funding he think could come as part of the COVID-19 relief money.

Thanks to Tom Leary and HIMSS for offering their insights and perspectives on some things we should be watching out for as health IT professionals.

This article is part of the #HealthIT100in100

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About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

   

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