I am really irritated. My hospital has told me they’re not supporting the federally required FHIR standard (a “FHIR endpoint”) to let me access my health data. Is this legal??

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Important update: a robust Twitter thread is drawing lots of answers on whether this is legal. Some of it is “gray area” but among other things:

• At present, even if their behavior is a violation, there’s no penalty!
• But by end of 2023, if they don’t have this, they might not get any more payments from CMS!
  • That’s Medicare and Medicaid, which are about 40% of all US hospital revenue
• There are three separate requirements.
  • System vendors are required (today) to offer a FHIR endpoint to their buyers (hospitals).
    • Well-known large vendors like Epic and Cerner offer it.
    • But Beth Israel Deaconess is its own system developer, and they haven’t created one.
  • Care providers (hospitals etc) aren’t required to buy them and offer them to patients (yet)
  • But by end of 2023, providers will have to offer this to patients, if they want to get paid by CMS (Medicare).

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Resuming the original post:

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