CMS has announced the formation of the Office of the Burden Reduction and Health Informatics, an organized effort to reduce regulatory and administrative burden and part of the agency’s Patients over Paperwork initiative.
The office’s aims follow President Trump’s executive order from 2017 that aimed to cut red tape and slash regulations and requirements.
“This announcement permanently embeds a culture of burden reduction across all platforms of CMS agency operations,” the announcement from CMS reads.
According to CMS, its actions as part of the PoP initiative have saved providers and clinicians $66 billion and 42 million unnecessary burden hours through 2021. The agency has also collected more than 15,000 comments from requests for information (RFIs) and stakeholder interviews about burden reduction efforts.
“The Office of Burden Reduction and Health Informatics will ensure the agency’s commitment to reduce administrative costs and enact meaningful and lasting change in our nation’s healthcare system,” CMS Administrator Seema Verma said in a statement. “Specifically, the work of this new office will be targeted to help reduce unnecessary burden, increase efficiencies, continue administrative simplification, increase the use of health informatics and improve the beneficiary experience.”
The agency also touted its burden reduction actions during the COVID-19 pandemic, stating it helped providers with temporary relief from certain data reporting measures and data submission deadlines for some programs, in addition to other relief measures.
The new office also is charged with considering the impact of new regulations on healthcare system operations, as well as engaging more clinicians, providers and health plans for stakeholder feedback.
On the health informatics side, the office will make interoperability a priority and leverage technology and automation to develop new tools for patients to own and carry their personal health data securely and easily across the healthcare spectrum.
Amy joined TriMed Media as a Senior Writer for HealthExec after covering home care for three years. When not writing about all things healthcare, she fulfills her lifelong dream of becoming a pirate by sailing in regattas and enjoying rum. Fun fact: she sailed 333 miles across Lake Michigan in the Chicago Yacht Club "Race to Mackinac."